TheUlyssesian

Cerebral Cortex · January 6

This made me happy too -

January 5

This is probably their best scene. And they already showed it?

January 5

1 hour ago, TownerFan said:

I didn't want to make a bold statement to say "all movies are just entertainment". Of course cinema can be art and can be used as a pure artistic medium. But 99.9% of the time here people discuss films that are made just for entertainment value (including West Side Story). And there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. My point was that if a director like Spielberg doesn't do something "meaningful" or "useful" as you said, then it's right to label it as "a gigantic waste of time". Saying that you didn't like it because it does not live up to some of his best work would be more than enough to express a perfectly agreeable point of view. Because, in the end, it's just a movie.

For sure. Like I said above - our reactions are just a proxy for what we thought of the remake.

If you don't like something, it can feel absolutely worthless. And if you like something, it can feel worth everything.

I just happen to be in the former camp on this one - for a director mind you, I immensely love and admire.

I will just also state that the theory of this forum is predicated on film music at least in a pretextual sense, so naturally those are the sort of films that get discussed here. I am sure we all watch a much wider swath of cinema than is discussed here, at least I do - and those most definitely veer towards very serious art. Spielberg is capable of that too and has made art several times in his career - often even melding entertainment and great art.

7 minutes ago, mrbellamy said:

I agree but just find it interesting that you'll be this generous for The Post and not WSS.

I value originality immensely - just as a personal preference. Or doing something not done before or telling a story not told before or making something not made before. Simply on that criterion The Post is vastly superior to me than WSS - which to me is an inferior remake of a superior adaptation in almost every imaginable way.

Tiburon · January 5

2 hours ago, TownerFan said:

When we see idols we rever being harshly criticized, it's kind of natural for some to step up as defense lawyers. I have yet to see WSS, but I guess call it "a gigantic waste of time and effort" is way beyond the point of a normal like/dislike debate. I firmly believe Cinema is one of the great human achievements of the 20th century (I know it was technically invented in the 19th, but the artform essentially was born in the 20th), but if we extremize this line of thought about 'usefulness' or 'meaningfulness' I can definitely say that any movie in the world can be see as a gigantic and ultimately useless venture, because no movie is necessary for anything essential in our lives. We get attached to them of course and they can reach even level of art, but that's rarer than most people truly convince themselves of. For the most part, movies exist just to entertain people and give them something to spend time with. That's it. Yes, there are much more detrimental hobbies and activities that are much more useless than watching movies of course. The only thing we should regret about a movie we didn't like is that we'll never get back that time we spent watching it instead of doing something else.

As Hitchcock said to Truffaut, "People think that movies are 'tranches de vie' (i.e. pieces of life), but I prefer to call my own 'tranches de gateau' (i.e. pieces of cake). Let's enjoy our cakes.

I respectfully disagree with this view entirely. I think cinema has the capability of creating art. It is an artistic medium - just as sculpture is, just as literature is, just as painting is, just as theater is.

To the extent that a medium has the capacity to create art, to represent the truth of humanity, to explore the mysteries of our minds and how we think, it is immensely valuable.

I do not subscribe to the view cinema is just entertainment. That might be the case with Hollywood blockbusters but there is a lot of worthwhile art that is created in this medium also. Might not meet the criteria of entertainment for 99.9999% of people but to the extent art is a noble pursuit, then no cinema is not useless.

Just my humble opinion.

January 5

I don't care for Meryl Streep all that much. What The Post excels at is that it is a tremendous work of film direction. As I have noted before, the Post is actually much more respected and admired in Europe for precisely its auteur qualities. The opening is a little bit hokey. But the entire final section - the last one hour or so - which almost play like takes place in a single evening as the journalists decide to publish the papers, it absolutely gripping, superb and as entertaining as any action movie. It shows Spielberg at his nimble-best, managing to arrange a large number of actors in several frames and giving each of them something to do while moving the scene along.

If you just like the directorial art of blocking, staging, mis en scene, composition and cutting, then The Post is a marvel.

Joe Brausam · January 4

33 minutes ago, Joe Brausam said:

I don't quite understand what the issue is here -

As TheUlyssesian said this was a vanity project for Spielberg. Something he did for himself. If that's the case what's the problem? Everyone is getting paid, it's not going to kill Disney's bottom line, and maybe they'll get a few awards out of it. What's the problem if Spielberg wanted to make it simply because he wanted to make it? Do we forget that musicals have revivals all the time on Broadway and elsewhere? Would you have the same criticism for the umpteenth revival of WSS or Les Misersables on Broadway? Who asked for a new revival of The Music Man to be staged with stunt casting in place like Hugh Jackman (who is probably doing a great job).

There's no reason to complain about these things, they exist and people will find something to enjoy about them. Sometimes you'll get lucky and find a large audience, sometimes it'll be a small one. I can tell you as a music teacher I LOVED this interpretation of West Side Story and it has received near universal praise and good word of mouth within our music education communities. Even if it was ONLY us that derived pleasure from this film I would say it was worth it.

A live show and a movie are not the same at all. Live shows can be revived ad nauseum no problem. It is not something bottled. Film is.

With that out of the way - your reasoning is basically tied to what someone thinks of the remake itself.

I happen to not have a good opinion of it, so I think it was gigantic waste of time, waste of effort and I would much rather have seen one of my favorite directors do something useful or meaningful. Sure I am no one to dictate his schedule but I can freely express my opinion.

Now those who happen to like the remake may think it was a good use of time and resources.

So ultimately it might boil down to what people think of WSS 2021 in deciding where they fall on the issue of its usefulness.

--

Now to demonstrate that the liking a movie shouldn't follow that you think it is useful .. for the discerning viewer... I will advance the case of Matrix 4.

I personally liked the movie, enjoyed it and I think it is good. I can still have the opinion that it was absolutely and totally pointless.

So even people who think the remake is good can have the opinion that this was a pointless movie and a deserved failure.

January 4

2 hours ago, His Royal Noelness said:

LLL, The Greatest Showman, and Les Mis all had big name actors involved. WSS didn’t. That was going to introduce its appeal immediately.

The first two were original musical. LLL cost only 30 mil. Les Mis was the first time the musical was being adapted to the big screen.

WSS 2021 is a remake of a successful box office musical that already was a box office smash, is widely available, considered a great cinema classic and won 10 oscars. It kinda-sorta like remaking Sound of Music. Why? - Would be a question a lot of audiences would have.

January 4

9 minutes ago, AC1 said:

I can cite 'extreme examples' all day long. There is no demand, unless it's a sequel to a succesful movie, or when you want to copy another movie's success. People are not that creative.

This movie was definitely copying another movie's success in that regard - going by your criterion. There had been recent musical hits that made money and the original movie was a blockbuster and the WSS on broadway has also made bank. Hence this movie version.

And again, this movie is exploiting a known IP for commercial reasons. And it failed at the commercial part.

January 4

8 minutes ago, AC1 said:

I don't understand this. There was no demand for The Godfather, Rocky, Star Wars, Alien, Seven or Schindler's List either.

Outside their craving for even more superhero movies, the people have nothing to demand.

Demand is a representative word. And again whipping out Godfather, Star Wars etc. are extreme examples. It implies WSS 2021 is somehow comparable to them it is not.

I think it is to do with IP. Those films were creating IP, WSS2021 was using it. Usages of IP are invariably commercial in nature.

As has already been stated above, if Speilberg wanted to put in the hard word and create a musical from scratch, he would have done so. Instead he chose a successful IP, to remake an already existing musical.

So when you are leveraging IP, producing content with commercial outlooks, working with blockbuster budgets, you definitely factor in demand.

January 4

3 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

@TheUlyssesian

I'm not sure if he "miscalculated". Many directors have many reasons for wanting to make a particular film. Perhaps it was just released at the wrong time?

Many great films fell at the wayside, financially, because they happened to be released alongside a mega-hit. Case in point: BLADE RUNNER, and THE THING. Look what they were up against.

If anything, the release date was unfortunate. Maybe if it was released last year, it would have cleaned up. I guess we'll never know.

That other films failed isn't a justification for your film failing. It is never a good result. And I mean - Blade Runner is one of the greatest films ever made - completely in a different universe. WSS2021 at the end of the day is the needless remake of a cinema classic. So not really analogous.

As to the release time - we have already stated repeatedly in this thread that the release date had nothing to do with the failure. We know for a fact that young people - given a product they like - are going out IN DROVES. Spiderman is performing as if there wasn't a pandemic in sight. Look at Sing 2, Encanto and Ghostbusters etc.

So the pandemic cannot be an excuse.

The stated goal of this film - its mission statement and the reason it even received a blockbuster production and marketing budget is because it was precisely made for young people - for the Spiderman crowd. It has young people in the lead roles - some of them youtube stars, it is about the lives of young people about young love and has those liberal activist pieties appealing to young people. It was heavily marketed to young people - with a not a penny spared in promotion.

It STILL failed. The conclusion is - there wasn't demand for this product at all. None. Zilch. Nada. There are think pieces being written about who Speilberg even made this movie for? The answer is really damning. The answer is himself. It very much is a personal vanity project. No one asked for this movie. No one. For 99.99% of the people who want to see a version of WSS, the original is good enough. There was literally no reason to make this film, not at this budget level, and certainly not before investigating if the young people they made it for had even the slightest interest in this.

Bayesian · January 4

3 hours ago, mrbellamy said:

It's missing the Montezuma movie which always seemed like the coolest one.

Ah yes one. When I made my post, this is the one I wanted to mention rather than killing but I remembered it as Monumenta and try and google what I might, I couldn't find the name, so I went with Killing.

41 minutes ago, Muad'Dib said:

I still can't believe this was the reason he dropped it. There's *no way* they couldn't find the right child actor.

30 minutes ago, crypto said:

They even had an Italian production office ready to go. From memory they were building sets before it all got scrapped.

IIRC Robopocalpyse was quite close to production as well, before the plug got pulled. Wasn't Michael Bay attached to direct after Spielberg departed?

Killing and Robopocalypse were very very close. Robopocalypse came down to the script. If Speilberg wanted to make it, he did have everything lined up. He decided at the last moment that he did not like the script and so pulled the plug. Killing really did come down to casting. And you will be surprised, this is sometimes an issue for multi-lingual roles. Landa in Inglorious Bastards was supposedly meant for Dicaprio but I wonder if that would have worked out. The part requires fluency in 4 languages with a majority of the scenes taking place not in English. Tarantino had the same problem, he thought he would shelf it if he couldn't cast Landa. He feared he had written an unplayable part. He then found Waltz.

Also another thing I noticed - bless his heart, Spielberg is EXTREMELY economical.

https://screenrant.com/steven-spielbergs-biggest-budget-movies/

Take a look at his budgets. Not one in the routine 200-250 range that the average superhero movie costs.

So this man is very old school, likes to come in on schedule on budget, and as a professional always deliver a profit for his financiers. One of the reasons he pulled Robo is because he thought it might be too expensive and turn a loss.

WSS is the bigges failure of his career in the sense this is the movie that will lose the most money out of any movie he has ever made. Surely that's got to hurt him a bit.

You really have to wonder, such a careful smart director really miscalculated on this one.

January 3

44 minutes ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

I believe you're looking for the Matrix Resurrections thread.

This is no different. Both movies will lose a lot of money.

Both were totally unnecessary.

I like one of them.

But I am thrilled by the failure of both.

WampaRat · January 3

34 minutes ago, WampaRat said:

That’s a good question. I wonder if he would have bothered to shoot scenes if they weren’t part of his initial vision of the movie? But due to time constraints he obviously had to shave things down.

I think that's part of the creative process which I find more interesting. I think most artists realize in finishing up their work that there can always be more economy, more leaning down.

I am currently working on a screenplay and I made this very elaborate structure for myself and I wrote a quick first draft to get it out. As I am doing the work of finishing it, I am losing so many scenes and lines - just realizing that I did not need them after all.

I think telling a story is a always a matter of communicating information - succinctly - to your audience. You realize there is often immense synergy in how the viewer consumes art. The viewer has an immense ability to fill in the blanks, as you realize that, you feel confident and comfortable taking more and more out so that you deliver a pacy experience and the viewer is never bored throughout and always intrigued and interested and entertained.

I definitely have this experience with writing, I've managed to cut 20 pages off my script from the first draft to the final draft.

I think film editing is much the same process. A film can read quite a bit differently when it is on the page. But when it is in front of your eyes, it can be quite a different beast and you can definitely pare it down. That is what I think Denis has done.

Sorry for the long winded answer here but I just wanted to make my point is that if we are interested in Denis The Artist's vision then we have to give in to his vision that he wants to show us. Anything else if of academic interest only - academic interest in the process of artistic creation - which is of course a worthwhile indulgence too.

Chen G. · January 3

I wonder if this kind of content has any meaning when the director has final cut.

Dune is exactly 100% Denis Villeneuve's movie. He had full absolute total control, made exactly the movie he wanted and how he wanted with no constraints whatsoever.

He presented his vision to the world and it was released in exactly his version of his vision.

So why is this extraneous material interesting? It's not like we are not seeing the movie the auteur wanted us to see. There isn't any sort of what-might-have-been with Dune is there?

Holko · January 3

I LOVE Spielberg but there is an unmistakable whiff of an ego project about WSS for him. He has been shouting from the rooftops since decades he wants to do a musical.

He did not want to do the hard work of creating a musical from the ground up. Say what you will about La La Land but they did that. No Spielberg wanted that HIS musical would be nothing less than the best American musical of all time - when it has a perfectly good classic adaptation.

Honest to god but for Spielberg, this probably wouldn't get made and now he has gone and set fire to 100 mil dollars just to scratch an itch.

As a fan of Spielberg, I am not sure this was a good use of either his time or his clout. I would much rather he gotten some other of his dream projects funded and made like The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara etc.

January 3

Then why spend 100 million dollars on an unsure thing in a genre that does not always perform well with no stars and a movie no one is asking a remake of?

It is almost like tempting fate to be a failure.

January 3

9 minutes ago, AC1 said:

People that love musicals, broadway ... La La Land was a huge succes.

Then why is it a box office calamity losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a massive write down?

Muad'Dib · January 3

It would have been a gigantic failure regardless. The problem for this movie is not timing - but its existence. Who was this made for? No one. Nobody asked for it. You can't make a product with zero demand and then wonder why it did not sell.

January 3

On 30/12/2021 at 9:21 PM, bruce marshall said:

You obviously have neither watched nor listened to the TRILOGY.

I unfortunately have watched the Nolan trilogy if you are referring to that. And not a note of - let's call it "music" to be charitable - inspired me to so much as listen to any track on youtube even. Just sounded like noise to me. And fart trombones blasting over everything.

TSMefford · January 3

Just came across this. Gonna post it here. It made me happy.

January 2

Parallel Mothers

Luck Number Slevin

January 1

Film Scores of the year

1. Zack Snyder's Justice League - Junkie XL

2. Annette - The Sparks Brothers

3. Jungle Cruise - James Newton Howard

4. Raya and the last Dragon - James Newton Howard

5. The French Dispatch - Alexandre Desplat

6. France - Christophe

7. Parallel Mothers - Alberto Iglesias

8. Eternals - Ramin Djwadi

Best Tracks of the year

1. At the speed of force - Zack Snyder's Justice League

2. Baby Aria - Annette

3. Eternals Theme - Eternals

4. Photoshoot - Parallel Mothers

5. Obituary - The French Dispatch

Best Composer

1. James Newton Howard

Best Film About Music

1. The Disciple

2. Annette

Biggest Disappointments

1. West Side Story

2. Nightmare Alley

3. The Tragedy of Macbeth

4. Annette

Best Films

1. Drive My Car

2. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

3. Memoria

4. Benedetta

5. Titane

6. The Worst Person in The World

7. France

8. Bad Luck Banging

9. Parallel Mothers

10. The Disciple

January 1

Review from Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jan/01/harry-potter-20th-anniversary-return-to-hogwarts-review-perilously-close-to-emetic

Calls it emetic - which means it made them vomit.

December 31, 2021

On a slightly related note - how toxic is Hammer? They are reshooting his scenes in another film out next year by Taika Waititi. Will Arnett stepping in his shoes. The Deadline article linked says reshoots for Death on the Nile were not possible given the ensemble nature of the production.

December 31, 2021

59 minutes ago, Mephariel said:

I much prefer Zimmer's two note trombones than his BvS theme. At least there is a purpose to the two notes and there a strong build up leading up to it. His BvS theme just sounds...uninspired.

It's not super inspired but surely more than 2 notes are better than 2 notes. 2 notes is just lazy.

Profiles

Forums

Posts posted by TheUlyssesian

Important Information