Subject:
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Re: Monday Morning Diversion
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:32:21 GMT
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1686 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, David Laswell wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Dave Schuler wrote:
> > I like The Fifth Element, though I accept that it's darned goofy, and
> > the "love is the answer" bit *is* pretty weak.
>
> Oh, my opinion of that film goes well beyond that tiny little point. I was
> twitching during the song-and-dance routine, my eyes were drawn to Gary Oldman's
> hideous costume like it was a 20 car pileup, the "perfect woman" badly needed
> braces...and an acting coach, the bad-guy costumes looked like the sort of
> padded-suit outfits you'd see in a Godzilla movie, and the whole movie tried to
> be too many things at the same time (many of them contradictory).
Nonsense! Everything was true, especially the contradictory parts, which were
also false!
RE: Song-and-dance routine: You mean the Diva? Yeah, I don't have much to say
about that, except to wonder if she's related to Bib Fortuna.
I liked the rubbery bad guys, though I don't know why. And for some reason I
loved Gary Oldman in the role, costume included. Weird.
> > I enjoyed Nemesis enough to list it as "not bad," but I agree that it
> > suffered from some major shortcomings. Still, I liked the big battle scene.
>
> I remember slightly more about Nemesis than I do about ST5. Two of the big
> things that I remember are that the Big Scary Aliens™ were given the worst
> possible name that they ever could have been given. Remans? As in Remus,
> brother of Romulus, the founder of Rome? C'mon, who was dumb enough to
> green-light that pathetic joke?
I don't know. I think it could have been cool, but it really wasn't necessary
to create a brother-race from scratch. I mean, Federation Space has a ton of
non-human races, so why can't the Romulan Star Empire have a few non-Romulan
races? No need to make it a big secret.
> > I had read Frank Miller's treatment of Batman in the years before Batman hit
> > the screen, and I wanted it to be so much more than it was.
>
> Oh, if his treatment was anywhere near being on par with The Dark Knight
> Returns, I doubt anyone would even remember the Superman series.
I'm hoping that the new Batman film kind of follows the Year One storyline,
though I don't actually know anything about the film's story (other than that it
takes place in his early days). A Dark Knight Returns film would be awesome, if
done correctly. Had DC followed through with its Batman vs. Superman script, I
wonder what we'd have seen?
> Between then and the point when the first X-Men movie was released, pretty much
> every other comic book adaptation was either not a true cultural icon (Spawn,
> Blade, etc) or deemed to be so abyssmal by the distributors that it either sat
> on the shelf for years or went directly to video (Punisher, Fantastic Four,
> etc).
I have never been able to find a copy of the Fantastic Four, which I'd like to
see just for the sheer masochism of it. I saw a few stills and read a few press
releases while it was in production, but that's the last I experienced of it.
When people think back to the beginning of the comic book movie trend,
> Batman is usually the first one that'll come to mind, followed by a long gap
> wherein no other comic book character really hit it big. At this point, in
> order for any movie to supplant Batman as the poster-child, it will need to be
> leaps and bounds beyond anything we've already seen before, in any genre.
That's a pretty good assessment. I'd be happy if Spiderman could take over the
mantle at this point, but I guess I have to accept the inertia of film to
resolve itself at its own pace.
> > 2. Jake Lloyd: A cute enough kid, but he should have had more guidance
> > from Lucas or from some kind of acting coach.
>
> He's a kid playing a kid. Not every child actor is going to be Haley
> Joel-Osmont, and not every kid character is going to need that level of acting
> ability for a believable performance. Lots of kids are real dorks, if you judge
> them by the same standards that are applied to adults. I think his timing could
> have used some improvement, but beyond that, I think his performance comes
> across as a typical kid trying to pose as an adult.
Maybe. There's a difference between seeming like a child-slave out of his depth
in a big, galactic conspiracy and seeming like a child-actor out of his depth in
a big, galactic film production. It never really seemed like the former, to me.
That's nothing on poor Jake, because Vader has some big boots to fill.
> > My complaints about AOTC are likewise pretty few:
> > 1. Hayden Christiansen: His whole Sociopathic Obsessive Love-
> > Stalker performance was so overwrought as to be unwatchable
>
> Anakin has been obsessing over Padme for ten years, after having only seen her
> for a few days. He _is_ a sociopathic obsessive stalker, and that's going to be
> a major component of his downfall (no spoiler info, just the bright flashing
> signs that were presented to us in AOTC). And her initial instinct shows that
> some part of her mind, at least, realized that.
Oh, I don't mind that the *character* is a sociopath. I just didn't believe the
way the actor portrayed the charater. This, too, might have been Lucas' fault,
> > 2. The Love Story: Wholly unconvincing and generally creepy
>
> Have you ever seen teenagers who are newly in love? It's rarely something that
> would inspire romantic epics. As for being creepy, I think that was
> intentional.
You don't have to tell me--I've *been* the creepy obsessor (though I don't think
I ever stalked anyone). Again, I don't mind if the character is intended that
way, but the acting always seemed unconvincing to me. But an even bigger worry
is why did Padme only really fall for him after he'd murdered dozens of men,
women, and children? That speaks volumes about her, too (though I admit that I
could be delightfully surprised if her odd choice works successfully into the
plot of EPIII).
> Now, I'm not saying that Lucas couldn't/shouldn't have found actors who could do
> a better job of portraying Anakin and Padme, or better directors to film the
> movies, but I think there are a dearth of middle-aged guys who are using the
> actors as scapegoats for the fact that they didn't have the same jaw-dropping
> experience that they did when they saw the original trilogy when they were young
> enough to be impressed by the Smurfs.
Hey, I never liked the smurfs. But there's just something different in the
character of the films , now. I don't mean that individual characters are
different, but that the films themselves seem less satisfying as films. EPV
stands as the pinnacle of the series, to me, and it just has a spark that the
pre-trilogy hasn't seemed to capture yet.
> > Lucas has a real problem with writing convincing dialogue, but he's always
> > been that way; either you accept his writing or you don't.
>
> I've got a couple of behind-the-scenes videos of the original trilogy, and there
> are at least a couple of instances where some of the main hero actors are
> commenting on how they'd told Lucas up front that his dialogue couldn't possibly
> work...until they saw the result on the screen.
Well, it's still corny onscreen, but Lucas did have the sense to mention
somewhere that the stilted dialogue is intended to remove the works from
tell-tale cultural/linguistic giveaways linking the films to a particular
decade. That's a good goal, if it works. Like I said--either you accept his
style or you don't. I guess I do, at the end of it all (and for the most part).
> > Generally I can get past it, except for rare moments that burst my
> > tolerance: "Your skin is so soft, not like sand." Dear mercy, where's my
> > airsickness bag when I need it?
>
> Hey, it's not like the Jedi order runs classes to teach their students how to
> score dates. He's a teenager who's spent over half of his life living with
> warrior monks who have rules against that sort of thing. He'd have to come up
> with his own pick-up lines from scratch.
I think I'd have preferred it if he'd said "Matilda, watch out for Zorg (you
know, the DEA agent who killed your family? He's coming back as Darth
Grievious." Now THAT'S a pickup line!
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Monday Morning Diversion
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| (...) I'm not talking about contradictory plot points, but contradictory themes. It's like watching a comedy series and catching those occassional tear-jerking episodes that make deeply profound statements...but without all of the funny episodes to (...) (20 years ago, 25-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Monday Morning Diversion
|
| (...) Oh, my opinion of that film goes well beyond that tiny little point. I was twitching during the song-and-dance routine, my eyes were drawn to Gary Oldman's hideous costume like it was a 20 car pileup, the "perfect woman" badly needed (...) (20 years ago, 24-Aug-04, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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