Sulphur on 5/12/2022 at 06:24
You're right in that it's a low bar. The current best TV show based on a video game is Arcane, which is set in the League of Legends universe - not very fertile ground at first blush, but it's skilled enough in the storytelling that even though it's a story we've seen a thousand times before, it's executed really well. Is it going to hold up well to other shows in the genre? Well, it'll fall largely into the middle of the pack.
Philosophically, I think that if you're going to enter a medium, you'll have to do so on its own terms. 'Good for an adaptation of <x>' shouldn't have to be a qualifier, when it should just be a good movie or a good show, full stop. Accounting for origins should be unnecessary unless they translate something new into the adapting medium.
For TLoU, translating what was good shouldn't be difficult, because games and cinema have a fair amount of symbiosis. It should be fine, like I mentioned. What I am curious about is that its arguably biggest, most pivotal moment did rest on an illusion of choice within the game, so how they're gonna treat that amongst other things in a way that's as equally meaningful in a passive viewing context is what intrigues me the most, more than having a live action rendition of moments I already loved.
Hit Deity on 5/12/2022 at 17:19
Quote Posted by Tocky
Also, going in the other direction, I quite liked a series aimed at young girls. Wednesday was excellent. It was a murder mystery spread over the course of a season. Tim Burton did a fine job of portraying an outcast among outcasts in a way most of us can sympathize with, particularly since many of the characters were annoying stereotypes.
My wife and I are currently watching it. We're about to start Ep.3 later tonight. It's better than I thought it would be. It has a definite Harry Potter-esque feel to it at times. Not necessarily a bad thing either. Burton seems capable; let's see if it holds up for the remainder of the season..
demagogue on 19/12/2022 at 16:39
I made a joke once about the elevator pitch for every Christopher Nolan movie: What if we flipped ... memory, dreams, space, time... on itself! Blaaaaaaaaaam!
Looks like this time he's just going straight to the blaaaaaaaam!
Seriously though, if there could be any medium that gives the proper scale and gravitas to the Manhattan Project story, it's not gonna be Matthew Broderick playing Dick Feynman. It'd be a Christopher Nolan biopic on the "I am become death" guy.
I also remember reading a biography on Oppenheimer back in the day that had a big impact on me. So I have high expectations.
[video=youtube;ZxslGy6yg4Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxslGy6yg4Y[/video]
Nicker on 23/12/2022 at 22:38
I have been looking for ways to repair my wounded grapes.
I can report success!
[video=youtube;0XdC1HUp-rU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XdC1HUp-rU[/video]
henke on 12/4/2023 at 01:28
Charlie's doin a movie!
[video=youtube;nGEuyiDsKgo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGEuyiDsKgo[/video]
The waitress is even in it!
demagogue on 2/7/2023 at 23:13
I guess we're in a new era now. It doesn't even occur to me that this might be something I want to watch. It's hard enough to get through the entire trailer. What is even the point of movies anymore? Are they trying to tell me something? All they seem to be anymore are so many people standing in front of a green wall muttering see me, maybe waving their arms so that we can pick them out from the background clutter. Am I being unfair?
[video=youtube;WwIM8vll5kw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwIM8vll5kw[/video]
demagogue on 3/7/2023 at 02:01
Doesn't apply to tv though.
[video=youtube;F7yInLy3h1Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7yInLy3h1Q[/video]
Sulphur on 3/7/2023 at 06:06
I think it's a fair assumption to say you've read Dune, so you know what it's trying to say. Is the question what's the point of movies, or the point of a latter-day Villeneuve big-budget movie, the epitome of murky, muddled, and bizarrely action-packed, lumbering in its attempt to balance attention spans with both leaden dialogue and bursts of action colour-graded through filters of tinted dust and orange piss?
I think I'm with Herzog in that we need to find new images (and here is Ebert's review of (
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-fall-2008) The Fall which invokes that quote, if you haven't seen that one and are interested). Dune certainly tries, and outside of context, those images can be striking. The weird thing is that they lose some amount of power when you fill in the context, surely the opposite of what is supposed to happen. I suppose it's symptomatic of both how we process the world at this point of time in our lives, and how the world reflects ourselves back at us, but also a sedimenting of so much ennui from the slow, inescapable attrition of it all.
demagogue on 5/7/2023 at 05:30
Thanks for indulging my rant. I was of course just in a bad mood after watching the trailer and admittedly old man yells at clouding. I've been feeling down about a lot of movies. I think because in the US I haven't been able to watch near as many movies as I did in Japan for reasons, and in particular few to no indie movies; just mainstream slosh.
The one big thing coming here that has caught my interest is Oppenheimer. I remember reading his biography already in high school. His story, and the nuclear weapon story in general are topics I've been fascinated with for a long time. I probably wouldn't have written what I did if I had been thinking about that movie.
But you have the right intuition that it's probably the fact that this is Dune that makes it somehow irk more than it should if it were any other scifi classic. Dune's actually an interesting case for me generally these days since I've been studying the history of colonialism and conflict in East Africa for my class (which was its original inspiration), and I've been reading a lot of Islamic mysticism & Sufism recently for reasons. In the trailer they've gutted the pseudo-Arabic and apparently made the Fremen language a nonsense language and tossed any specific link to Islamic mysticism from the story. Well it's a mixed bag. You're supposed to distrust white Americans that didn't grow up practicing a religion writing about it while presuming too much authority on it to begin with, especially when it's linked to real populations in real countries under all kinds of social & economic pressures the West has a hand in. But somehow gutting that side of it out altogether as if it's just pure fantasy without any link to what inspired it, that also seems fishy. Well I've had mixed feelings about it. I'll grant I've always liked Villeneuve's aesthetic and sense of scale and tone ever since Enemy, which I was really into. (I've got mixed feelings about Arrival for different reasons I've probably already posted about.)
On the point about a new imagery, I'll probably have to have a dedicated post to that. That's something I think a lot about too. (I've got a folder of screenshots from movies to make paintings out of, and top of the list is Herzog's crowning scene in Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Second is a scene from Samson and Son. XD ) The Fall was an important movie for me--not least because of Lee Pace, who is from the same small town in OK my dad's side of the family is from--although I've also got mixed feelings about that too for still different reasons, mixing the sublime with the over-the-top bathos that went over like oil and water, although overall I still cared a lot about it. But I appreciated the aesthetic thoughtfulness that went into it. I'll have to come back to the general thesis here sometime though.
demagogue on 11/7/2023 at 00:04
I watched the first Dune again last night, and it held up better than my memory of it.
I still think the entire section between the crash landings of the first and second ornithopter was fluff it didn't need.
But aside from that, if anything the story was better laid out than the Lynch version, which should probably be the main criteria.
I was paying attention to it this time, and I think they carried it.
It looks great of course. The casting did the job. There was more and more accurate symbolism in this one than the Lynch version.
Anyway, if the 2nd version holds up to the 1st and doesn't have as much fluff I'll be happy with it.
Anyway, I came here to post this:
[video=youtube;OAZWXUkrjPc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZWXUkrjPc[/video]
My impression is that it doesn't feel very much in the l'esprit français.
I don't think it's a disqualification for someone outside a culture to tell the story of another country's national mythology.
But I think you have to capture that country's spirit, I mean if you're going to tell a story about Napoleon of all people.
We may not be seeing enough for me to have much of an informed opinion anyway though.
