January 1, 2010
Avatar, Invictus, and The Road
I just recently watched a few great movies worth mentioning - Its been a good week or two for seeing movies.
AvatarI have really liked some of James Cameron's earlier films. He has a gift for bringing to life a story about humans in extraordinary circumstances. Aliens, and The Abyss are among some of my favorite of his films, and there are plot elements between those films shared with Avatar.
For over a decade James Cameron has been working on bringing this story to life in a visual way like nothing before. Cameron developed a very unique 3-dimensional visual experience by combining a lot of new technology and filming techniques, such as: involving two cameras to film each shot using six times the normal amount of frames per second (3 per eye) with spiraling stereogram technology, and using head-mounted camera's attached to the actor's faces to gather their specific facial reactions. He also worked with digital effects companies like Weta Works (Lord of the Rings), and Digital Domain (the 5th Element, Apollo 13, Transformers). And as far as visuals are concerned Avatar is a remarkable film.
The movie theater I watched Avatar in featured a high definition screen with 3D technology provided by RealD. They provided recyclable 3D glasses that take advantage of the spiraling stereogram image shown on the screen. By being polarized each eye sees a separate image, and the spiraling effect allows viewers to tilt their head without distorting the separate images presented for each eye (try crossing you eyes for a second and tilting your head to see what this technique was avoiding).
Because of the advanced technology and because the film was always intended to be show in this way, nothing about the 3-dimensional effects seemed heavy handed, instead to me it felt like a brighter and move vivid movie experience. Both people I went to see the film with were equally amazed by the quality of the 3-dimensional visual effects, one of which was very skeptical of seeing it in 3D.
As for the story of Avatar, there sadly isn't as much to write about. The acting was fine, and the characters were interesting, but the plot was kept simple and there is what might seem like a heavy handed political and ethical message about humans disregarding the sacred balance of life and taking what they want without consideration for nature or indigenous society, which is fine, its just unfortunate that the story was too underdeveloped.
I was watching Aliens the other day (which is the first sequel to Alien, and my personal favorite in the Alien series) and I realized that this film is a much more engaging as a story. And as I mentioned the story elements in Aliens and The Abyss are very similar. So what makes Avatar original is in the way it brings this new vivid world to the screen.
InvictusI really don't know much about the life of Nelson Mandela, but after watching Invictus I feel compelled to learn. This story is about a particular time in his life, just after winning the election for president, and his focus on the national Rugby team to bring about unification in a post-apartheid South Africa. It seems amazing to me that year after year Eastwood somehow generates another amazing film (or two). A year ago I was amazed by Gran Torino, and a year before that it was Letters From Iwo Jima. Invictus is interesting on a lot of levels – most of all as a story of compassion and forgiveness of a brilliant man, and for its political history, and as a film about sports. Morgan Freeman portrays newly the Elected Mandela, and Matt Damon portrays Francois Pienaar who was captain of the country's Rugby team, the Springboks. The film's title comes from a poem kept by Mandela while in prison, written by William Ernest Henley, which ends with the lines “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” One of the most moving scenes of the film is when Pienaar stares through bars of the cell Mandela was incarcerated in for all those years, looking out at the yard where he toiled day after day; he hears the words in the poem as they would have sounded in the mind of Mandela while he waited and hoped for his release.
The RoadFinally, The Road, has made its way to my town. If it weren't for being such a dark story, this movie might get more screenings. Ever since seeing No Country For Old Men, also based on a novel by author Cormac McCarthy, I have been looking forward to this movie. I've enjoyed movies of a post-apocalyptic nature (especially when they fall into the category of survival-horror) most of all because of the interesting dynamic it creates for the characters. Some of my favorites include 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead, I Am Legend and so on. But The Road has established what seems like an insurmountable new bar for post-apocalyptic films, in terms of depicting human depravity and in envisioning such a realistic dying world.
The Road is brutal, cold, grim, and nearly hopeless, and what better way to cast a light on what really matters most: “the fire inside,” the love between a father and a son. There are a few scenes that are shockingly disturbing. The major significant characters are the father and the son (Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee respectively), but there are flashbacks of a mother (Charlize Theron), and man along the road (Robert Duvall), and other minor characters met along the way.
Labels: Avatar, Invictus, movies, The Road
July 6, 2009
Summer Movies - Part 1
I really liked the latest Star Trek film - Disclaimer: I am pretty much a yellow-belt Trekkie. I'm not quite up there with the nerds who can name the episode number that featured Tribbles, but I did watch a fair amount of The Next Generation and Voyager as an extremely geeky teenager (Unfortunately for me we didn't have the WB where I grew up so there was no option for me to obsess over Buffy the Vampire Slayer) so I did have a fair bit of anticipation for this movie. Director JJ Abrams (who has been responsible as director or producer for films and shows such as: LOST, and Cloverfield) did an excellent job restarting this film franchise. And he did so using a very sly plot technique (so here begin movie spoilers...). This is not a prequel as I was expecting, instead by using the element of time travel, the story rewrites Star Trek history by altering events that happened before the original television series, totally changing the circumstances that introduce Kirk and Spock, and creating a huge difference in the time line upon which all previous Star Trek shows are based. The casting was great. I especially liked Simon Pegg playing the part of Scotty. I was totally won over by this latest Trek, and I look forward to future installments in this altered Trek universe.
If you like the earlier Terminator films you'll probably appreciate Terminator Salvation. This movie, the forth in the Terminator series, takes place in the future when T-600s are prevalent and the machines are about to start production on the T-800 model, which you will remember was the version of Terminator that was the main antagonist in the original film.
There really are two main characters in Terminator Salvation, which for me is its biggest detraction. The real main character of the story is Marcus who believes he is human but is in fact partially a terminator created by the machines. His character is enough to make an interesting story. John Conner, played by Christian Bale is the leader of the human rebellion, and he is the most important character overall between all the films. But this story is focused on Marcus who must cope with being both machine and human while sheparding the young Kyle Reese until he meets with John Conner who will become his son. Bale is good as John Conner and I think another sequel that focuses on his role and Reese would be interesting.
I was pretty young when Terminator 2 came out, but I remember it being a big deal. It was at a time when my parents and I were moving into a new house that had a large satellite dish in the backyard. We wern't paying for anything but we received a lot of ramdom broadcasts, such as: broadcasts of baseball games without commercials, we just heard what the announcers were saying to each other during commercial breaks, and we got American games with Japanese announcers, and we also got the E Entertainment Television network. And I remember that E ran a Terminator 2 promotional special highlighting the amazing computer effects over and over. I'll remember that summer for having to , and I had to mow two yards since it took several months for my parents to sell our old house.
Two movies I'm interested in on the horizon are Surrogates (IMDb) (trailer) and The Road (IMDb) (trailer). Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis, is about a detective solving a mystery in a futuristic world where people live their lives through robotic surrogates. The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, is a post-apocalyptic film about a man and his son on a journey across an American wasteland that looks incredibly bleak - based on a story by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote No Country For Old Men.
Labels: movies, Star Trek, Surrogates, Terminator Salvation, The Road