Chen G.

Its certainly ups the pace, but not to the degree that's I'm expecting a second chapter to do.

I still think there was room to tighten the thing slightly; which is to say nothing of its even longer sequel.

Hey, I like the movie. But I don't think the script does it any favours. Not in terms of how long it takes to plot to pick up, and not in terms of quite how the magical world is revealed. That little prologue with Dumbeldore (which is only there because the script is just an abridged version of the book) diminishes the surprise of discovering the Wizarding World with Harry. Starting with the Dursleys and portraying them as more of a normal family, making Harry's disappearing glass trick more ambigious, etcetra - would have made the fantasy all the more wonderous. Kloves and Columbus should have followed William Wyler's advice: "If you want to shock an audience, get them almost to the point of boredom before doing so."

I hope Villenueve’s film is great and does well. However, those kinds of broad statements run a very high risk of leading to disappointment.

Which is just about what happens in the movie. It doesn't have much of a plot to speak of until very late in the game. It gets by using the novelty of introducing the magical world to the audience, but its still a bit much for me. Kloves didn't really adapt the book, though. He just made an abridged version of the novel, formatted as a screenplay. The issue with adapting novels to film goes far deeper than books being too long for films to fully accomodate them, and therefore just abridging the book isn't really enough.

My favourite Potter film. I would have edited the film a bit differently, but not another film in the series encapsulates the themes more than the climax of this one. One feels it in one's soul. Superb.

Possibly the best shot in the film.

And the suggestion of giving The Lord of the Rings the same treatment... to which the answer is yes.

Not quite. Lawrence premiered at 221 minutes (plus credits and additional music). Lean edited the picture in a rush, and was displeased with the overall length, and the pacing of the film's second part, which was still being scripted during principal photography. So when producer Sam Spiegel suggested cutting the film, Lean agreed and cut it to 202 minutes. When work began on the restoration, the sound for the missing 19 minutes had disappeared and the actors had to be redubbed. Sadly, Jack Hawkins had passed away by this point and was dubbed by a voice actor. In the scene where Allenby convinces a traumatized Lawrence to return to Arabia, Hawkins was talking in closeup, almost to the camera, and Lean found the dubbing at that point unconvincing, so he trimmed the scene; and a couple of other shots while he was at it. As a result, I always find the finished scene, where Lawrence changes his mind, much too ubrupt.

Yep. It should be 233 minutes; but that version is sadly unavailable.

You know any other version of Lawrence in UHD? Pity about the five minutes Lean cut out of the film during the restoration. There's at least one piece there which I view as absolutely essential to the film, but Lean thought the dubbing on Jack Hawkins wasn't convincing and left it out. Shame.

Happy 50th birthday to Christopher Nolan! While I don't subscribe to the cult-like adoration, I have enjoyed (to varying degrees) every film he'd done. Here's to many more to come.

That's not really The Hero's Journey. There are at least two notable differences: one, the hero's learning from the mentor-figure and subsequent maturation happens offscreen, and isn't the result of the hero making an active choice to undertake some kind of quest: rather, he or she are whisked away in youth following a family tragedy. Secondly, the hero's return home as a transformed individual is absent. Instead, he or she die for the cause. Its more of a revenge story, culminating in martyrdom.

Rogue One actually follows many of the same beats: young hero suffers a family tragedy and gets taken away by a older character. Having grown-up offscreen into a warrior, the hero returns home and, after some reluctance, comes to lead a struggle for freedom and dies for the cause.

I need to rewatch it, but I wouldn't say that. From memory, it was just a little bit dull for me, but nothing too bad. Certainly, nothing about it was incoherent and detestable like The Rise of Skywalker.

Oh, I'd watch Rogue One on loop before I lay eyes on The Rise of Skywalker ever again.

I need to get around to rewatch it. My memory was that it was a good-looking, well-directed, unique but ultimately somewhat tedious film, with slightly anemic performances and too much prequelitis for my tastes. I wasn't even that crazy over those famed final fourty minutes.

Not "one of". "The". Since Bond, opening you film with an attention-grabbing action sequence had become something of a usual practice - MI films and Indiana Jones films do it constantly, as do most Avengers, Middle Earth and Star Wars films - but if I were to point a filmmaker to a textbook example to study on how to do that sort of thing, I'd probably point them to GoldenEye.

It was scanned at 4K, but funnelled to 2K. According to American Cinematographer: Besides, like I said, Alexa XT and 35mm (the other two formats the film was shot with) aren't 4K sources: they're between 2.5K and 3.4K, accordingly. Rogue One was shot at around 5K, and funnelled to 4K. Its all fairly academic, of course; but its nice the producers on Rogue One went the extra mile with the presentation. Its also a cleaner presentation, naturally.

Other than a bit of IMAX footage (which was funneled through a 2K DI anyway) all of The Force Awakens was shot in sub-4K formats, as were The Rise of Skywalker, some of Solo and most of The Last Jedi. Rogue One is the only one shot entirely in a format in gross excess of 4K and funnelled through a 4K intermediate.

I’ll rectify that to “the only Star Wars that’s actually 4K in its entirety”, Solo having used Alexa Mini and Alexa XT. The Last Jedi is the same thing.

It better be, being the only one that’s actually 4K.

Watched this in real time (it’s dawn now in Israel). Sublime.

Also, GoldenEye is a golden standard for action filmmaking. That cold opening!