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What are your favorite shots in a movie?


John

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11 minutes ago, Quintus said:

 

See, it's been years since I saw this and I remember it totally living up to the hype and it was monochromically striking, but the 4:3 spoils its picturesque still credentials for me. Bah! I should try and get over myself a bit.

 

Yeah, funny enough, while Casablanca is one of my favourites, and I love that scene, I thought the same when I posted the pic...that it just looks weird and "uncinematic" in that ratio. And like you, I immediately decided that was a lame opinion. Even if I do have to admit it would look much better in 2:35.

 

But I cheated a bit, I had a bunch of ideas of top shots, but I just ended up posting shots based more on their poignancy and meaning to me, and not so much on the cinematography. Just way, way too many of the latter to choose from for that.

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4 minutes ago, Margo Channing said:

 

Fascinating.

 

4 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

 

Yeah, funny enough, while Casablanca is one of my favourites, and I love that scene, I thought the same when I posted the pic...that it just looks weird and "uncinematic" in that ratio. And like you, I immediately decided that was a lame opinion. Even if I do have to admit it would look much better in 2:35.

 

I spent a stupid amount of time trying to find something from an old 60s B&W British film that I love, but the images online (and their ratio) were just too unsatisfactory for posting.

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I personally thought automatically of Jaws when the camera shoot throught the great white shark jaw in Quint's bathhouse.  Its a beautifully shot sequence in that near perfect film.

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1 hour ago, Nick1066 said:

 

 

 

Yeah...this is a that "extreme polarisation" in opinions about movies.

 

There IS a middle ground here. By no means to do I think La-la land is some kind of classic, and I don't think it merited all the over the top praise and awards it got.

 

But in terms of just escaping by watching pure Hollywood for a couple hours? If was fine....more than fine, it was fun. It certainly wasn't anywhere near "film garbage" or a "stain" on musical cinema. That's not even good nonsense.

 

Forget it. They stubbornly persist at rating movies as binary - either 10/10 masterpieces, or 0/10 stains on cinema history. Since any old regular guy has a platform on the internet now, nuance became diluted.

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That reminds me of this brief cut, which always stood out to me for its brilliant placement and effectiveness at communicating scale and remoteness.  Kubrick was great for those infrequent deviations from his usual objective cinematography to emphasize something, be it this, or a rare but perfectly timed closeup (when Jack squints at Delbert Grady in the bathroom, for instance, that shit is harrowing), etc.

 

comp-ast.jpg

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Almost any Spielberg movie has a shot that's in one of my favorites. 

 

To just list one, there's a shot in Minority Report after Lamar is publicly revealed to be Anne Lively's murderer, and he spots Anderton's hooded form walking on the far side of the hall. The camera closes up to Lamar's face...with Williams' music, and the exhalation of Lamar's nostrils, that's all you need to feel fate and destiny looming.

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I've always really loved this shot from the closing scenes of The Godfather Part III:

 

closing scene.jpg

 

The death of Michael Corleone. A haunting parallel to Vito's death in his garden from the first film, except that unlike his father, he is alone when he dies. There are no loved ones near him as he passes. He is utterly alone.

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6 hours ago, Romão said:

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7 hours ago, Sharky said:

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Good choice, Sharky, but here's one with better quality:

 

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Why Ridley didn't 'letterbox' The Duellists is a mystery to me.

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14 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

Why Ridley didn't 'letterbox' The Duellists is a mystery to me.

 

You mean why didn't he shoot it in anamorphic? Super 35 wasn't commonplace in the 70s. Maybe the producers couldn't afford to rent anamorphic Panavision lenses.

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23 minutes ago, Not Mr. Big said:

The Last Jedi?

 

One of the coolest things about The Last Jedi was how magnificently Mark Hamill has aged, unlike some actors his age who've down the plastic surgery route. He really does resemble Ollie Reed in some shots.

 

BTW, that still's from Ken Russell's The Debussy Film (1965). It's a TV movie about an actor (Reed) who's playing Debussy in a biopic, and begins to closely identify with the composer.

 

 

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11 hours ago, John said:

I've always really loved this shot from the closing scenes of The Godfather Part III:

 

closing scene.jpg

 

The death of Michael Corleone. A haunting parallel to Vito's death in his garden from the first film, except that unlike his father, he is alone when he dies. There are no loved ones near him as he passes. He is utterly alone.

 

A beautiful shot that nonetheless isn't as effective as it could have been due to the time jump which causes the scene to lose much of its impact.

 

It felt tacked on because it was tacked on.

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7 minutes ago, Sharky said:

 

One of the coolest things about The Last Jedi was how magnificently Mark Hamill has aged, unlike some actors his age who've down the plastic surgery route. He really does resemble Ollie Reed in some shots.

 

BTW, that still's from Ken Russell's The Debussy Film (1965). It's a TV movie, but you'd never know it.

Hamill fits back into the role in a way that I would never have guessed in 2011 or so (when he was more or less retired from live-action acting).  It's arguably the highlight of the film.  

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17 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

 

A beautiful shot that nonetheless isn't as effective as it could have been due to the time jump which causes the scene to lose much of its impact.

 

It felt tacked on because it was tacked on.

 

Now I'm not one of those who argues Part III is secretly a masterpiece or the best of the 3, but for me the point of the time-jump is to imply that following his daughter's death he was almost cursed with many completely empty years, devoid of meaning or any events worth remarking upon.

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8 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

Now I'm not one of those who argues Part III is secretly a masterpiece or the best of the 3

 

Best of the 3? Are there people who really argue that?!

 

 

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I'm not sure about favourite shot of all, but the greatest shot of all time is, undoubtedly, the opening shot of STAR WARS.  It lasts for about twenty five seconds, and in those seconds-those six hundred frames-the way we watch, and listen to, films, was changed, forever. That's what makes it the most emotive, and the most important shot in all of cinema.

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16 hours ago, Bilbo said:

I could go on forever...

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Is this shot actually in the movie, or a publicity still? Not doubting it's there, just can't remember it specifically.

 

17 hours ago, Bilbo said:

 

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Thank Ralph Bakshi for this one. Bonus points if you can find this scene in the book!

 

Bakshi-and-Jackson-are-painting-the-same

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