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Issues with GMAIL - UPDATED ×
Issues with GMAIL - UPDATED

Chen G.

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Everything posted by Chen G.

  1. Chen G.
    The first two Harry Potter films essentially don't have a screenplay. They're simply abridged versions of their namesake novels. This is kind of the same. How much it bothers you in each film depends on you, really.
  2. Chen G.
    I watched this today out of sheer curiosity. Its fine (just fine), and whatever problems it has are: a) no different than those of films like The Chamber of Secrets (i.e. a non-filmic structure and thrust) and b) not at all the fault of the director, David Yates, who is on fine form here. He directs the actors well (Depp is fine in this), and knows where to place the camera and when and how to move the camera. He does what he can with the edit to present this clunky screenplay in as lean and energetic a form as possible.
  3. Chen G.
    "Contrivance is fine" - Vince Gilligan.
  4. Chen G.
    But woefully overpowering in the mix.
  5. Chen G.
    What I mean is that the characters arent' as engaging as in other Nolan films. Its a movie I enjoy for its spectacle rather than its (attempts at) drama. I don't presume to bash it: I like it fine. Just fine, though.
  6. Chen G.
    No disagreement there. The former is much too wordy (in its third act especially) and the latter is just a heist film.
  7. Chen G.
    I think even most of the film's biggest fans will agree that it isn't quite top-tier Spielberg - which is basically all that's been said about it in this thread. I don't think anyone's here saying its bad. Interstellar is...fine.
  8. Chen G.
    Well, the assumption is that: a) a more diverse cast more closely reflect the real world, and so "grounds" the film in reality all the more; b) the more diverse the cast is, the easier it is for people of different identity groups to identify with them. Assumption (a) kind of disregards genre: for instance, it makes sense that the cast of an action film will be mostly comprised of men, and that the cast of a romance film will be predominantly female - and NOT the other way around. Assumption (b) has more basis in reality, although its hardly too much to ask the audience to sympathize with the characters based on their personality and predicament.
  9. Chen G.
    Yeah, its not a hyper-masculine role, so it can be played by a woman all the same. Try a female James Bond, however... Although to be fair, I generally don't have a problem with stirring up the gender and/or ethnicity of the main character in a film/series. Protagonists aren't characters that you expect to represent the average man or woman. They're exceptional by virtue of the fact that they are the protagonists of their stories. Its more when there's an attempt to mimic real-world demographics through the entirety of the cast. Its not that its an evil scheme or anything, but it seems an incredibly limiting casting criteria. When it just applies to the gender ratios, that's one thing, but when you also start throwing ethnicities into the mix, than you end of with endless numbers of groups and sub-groups that need "representation" within your cast, which is just not at all practical.
  10. Chen G.
    Its certainly formulaic, but is it politically correct? I dunno.
  11. Chen G.
    These are the same kind of people who say this kind of nonsense. and this:
  12. Chen G.
    There was a trailer that showed London being revealed in a kind of Spielberg fashion, which I liked. Otherwise, I'm conceptually not too interested, with the exception of seeing Jackson (as a screenwriter, anyway) tackling a large-scale science-fiction story: unless you count Bad Taste, that's really a first for him. Its on that ground too, that I should like to see his Tintin 2, to see him try his hand in animation.
  13. Chen G.
    Depends on how its done. Five movies gives you a lot of wiggle room to play with those kinds of choices. I'll take your word for it, then. Oh well...
  14. Chen G.
    Unless that'd be treated as an early, false ending, and the five films will continue into Voldemort's rise to power.
  15. Chen G.
    When I say connections I don't mean references, recurring characters or characters related to recurring characters in Harry Potter. I mean a continuation of the same central conflict. i.e. that, somewhere down the road, these films will explore Voldemort's rise to power. Its fine that this pentalogy has its own story, but idealy it would gradualy morph into that of Harry Potter before this series concludes.
  16. Chen G.
    I don't mean cohesive in the sense that there are or aren't plot inconsistencies (for instance, the use of magic) or continuity issues. I mean cohesive in a dramatic sense - i.e. that it kind of works like one huge screenplay told in multiple installments. To me, that's the whole point of a film series: telling a story you could never hope to tell in one film.
  17. Chen G.
    The thing for me is that the eight Harry Potter films form a nice unified story. In spite of changing directors and aesthetics, the way in which Rowling (who claims to have outlined the major plot points in advance) has shaped the story gives it a nice flow. If you were writing the entire Harry Potter series as one screenplay, you would have made Voldemort manifest himself in the end of the first act, and reveal the nature of the Horcruxes just before the beginning of Act three, with Dumbeldore's death ushering the characters into their lowest point and into the third act proper. Well, as it turns out, that's just what happened in the series, but on a much larger scale, and I think that's something that is to be commended. If Fantastic Beasts can sit side-by-side with the Potter films, without making this kind of "meta-structure" too lopsided, It'd be great. Of course it wouldn't really work for new audiences, because the whole charm of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is predicated upon the idea that the audience is revealed to this wizarding world just as Harry is. But still... I was thinking more along the lines of a throughline with regards to the central conflict of the series (that being, the Wizarding World versus Voldemort). Recurring characters or settings are fine, but not enough to form one overarching story, like the Potter films put together do.
  18. Chen G.
    Is that in any way setting the stage for Voldemort's rise? Because otherwise I don't understand what's the throughline from this into Harry Potter.
  19. Chen G.
    If that's the case, why not just stage a mockumentary in Hogwarts about its architecture? People don't really come for movies to see the setting - they come to see a story set in that setting.
  20. Chen G.
    How are people actually still taking film titles at face value? They're just supposed to be pretty names to get you to look into the film. That's it.
  21. Chen G.
    I still think saying that its a study of Bilbo and Thorin's relationship is a wrong asesment. Its much more about Thorin as a solo character, and of his and his compatriots' yearning for their homeland, and of Thorin's personal tragedy. I find that aspect fascinating, deftly handled, worthy of a trilogy and refreshingly different to anything in The Lord of the Rings. I also don't see the Dol Guldur subplot as so extraneous. Undercooked? Yes. At times mishandled? Absolutely. But redundant? No. It is part of the Tolkien canon, it explains Gandalf's absence (which is imperative) and its actually woven quite tightly into the narrative, by making both Azog and the Orc armies attacking Erebor subservient to Sauron. She very quickly went on some tangent regarding some contractual stuff with Warner Bros that I couldn't care less about. Just as much as we need to separate the art from the artist, I think we need to separate art from the process. I generally find Lindsay's essays (and really the whole concept of a full-length essay delivered in video format) overwrought and overly pedantic and petty, and of course when it came to discussing matters such as Tauriel, she infused it with her own brand of social agenda - which I found distasteful. For comparison, she once said that the closing line of King Kong - "It was beauty killed the beast" - should be "colonialism killed the beast". Or her notions of racism in Tolkien's works. I mean, gimmie a break, lady. Also, Lindsay's much more of a screenwriter than Chris, and her analyses are much more script-oriented - making her reviews and essays much less well-rounded than those of Chris Hartwell or the blokes at 3byThree, who make prudent comments on both the way films are written and directed. I'm saying this not necessarily as someone who agrees with Chris all too often, but I appreciate the way he articulates what he likes and why.
  22. Chen G.
    Thank you!
  23. Chen G.
    Hate? Hardly. I rarely hate films: its counterproductive. But I don't think they're good movies, especially the second one.
  24. Chen G.
    I believe the first film was rushed: you can really see it in some of the effects shots. To me, the issue with films 1-2 isn't with Rowling producing the film, or even Chris Columbus' directing (although his work with the actors is very subpar). Its main weakness is Steve Kloves' screenwriting, and way its presented in the final edit: whether he lacked the confidence to make changes and only gathered it as he progressed with the series, or whether he was coarced to write a "faithful" screenplay by Columbus or one of the producers. You can't in good conscience call it a screenplay: its just an abridged version of the novel, formatted as a screenplay. The first one's charming enough, though. As for being "cash cows" - to me, that's irrelevant if you enjoy the movie. All blockbusters are cash cows in that they're designed to make lots of money.
  25. Chen G.
    Whenever you dabble in nationalistic themes in western cinema (which Braveheart certainly does), you have to ground it in something more personal and immediate. In this case, a personal revenge story. I think it does that sort of thing very well. Well enough, that an un-nationalistic man such as myself, can still empathize with it. You can almost look at the movie as a thematic anthology: the first twenty minutes are a domestic drama, The next twenty minutes are a romance film. From there to the one hour mark it is a personal revenge flick, but afterwards it becomes an epic of nationalistic fight for freedom, until the two hour mark where it turns into a tragedy. That's part of what I look for in epics: not just a scope of scenery, the setpieces or the cast, but of disparate genre elements.
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