Movies

[futon]

On 11/11/2023 at 2:14 AM, Tim Sielbeck said:

I'm looking forward to this one:

Watching Godzilla movies on TV is one of the things I remember doing when my family lived in Japan.

今日、予定どおりに妻が子供を連れて友達の家に遊びに行ったから、ようやく余裕時間があることになった。ゴジラ-1.0見に行ったんだ。全くいい映画です。そして70周年の映画としていい作品でした。

The wife took the kids to play to a friend's house today as has been planned. So I finally got some spare time. I went to see Godzilla Minus One. It was thoroughly a good movie. And it's a good piece of work as a 70th anniversary movie.

Edited November 26, 2023 by futon

[TonyE]

Napoleon, a short summary (SPOILER ALERT):

-As with more or less all Ridley Scott movies it is technically and visually stunning, some scenes are really awesome.

-Dialogue sometimes a little weird to be honest and sometimes inconsistent; in the famous event when french troops rally to his side rather than open fire after his return from Elba he refers to them as "my fifth army" and 10 seconds later as "the 5th regiment" (which is correct).

-Many events are truncated or left out all together, the movie feels more like top 10 events of Napoleons life from 1794 to 1821 with Josephine as the sticky unifying backdrop. As an example it goes straight from the retreat from Moscow in 1812 to his abdication in 1814 without anything between.

-While Toulon is passable, the big battles shown (Austerlitz, Borodino and Waterloo) are atrocious and bear little resemblance to the real thing, they are more like medieval battles fought in Napoleonic gear. This is especially noticable with Waterloo to a ridiculous degree, even the Prussians enter the battlefield from the wrong side. Even with CGI the massive scope of the real battles are lost and they look more like brigade sized affairs.

-Napoleon leading cavalry charges in person at Borodino and Waterloo is......well......

-His abilities on the battlefield and as a commander is reduced to him shouting "Fire the cannon!" or "Send in the infantry!" most of the time, the marshals are almost totally absent or just decor in a few scenes.

-Uniforms are surprisingly good, they do manage to show most of the changes from 1794 to 1815, few movies manage to do this due to the cost of costumes.

-Joaquin Phoenix is way too old for the role and it shows, especially in the early scenes.

-Waterloo.....sigh.....the Duke of Wellington has several riflemen with scoped (!!!!) Baker rifles that keep a close eye on Napoleon, one asking if he can take a shot when Napoleon emerge from his tent in the morning.

-The guy playing Wellington seemed to be channeling Stephen Fry's Wellington from Blackadder.

 

Edited November 28, 2023 by TonyE
Added some more to the list.

[sunday]

Bondarchuk still reigns supreme when battle scenes are mentioned, then.

[lucklucky]

1 hour ago, TonyE said:

Napoleon, a short summary (SPOILER ALERT):

-as with more or less all Ridley Scott movies it is technically and visually stunning, some scenes are really awesome.

-dialogue sometimes a little weird to be honest and sometimes inconsistent; in the famous event when french troops rally to his side rather than open fire after his return from Elba he refers to them as "my fifth army" and 10 seconds later as "the 5th regiment" (which is correct).

-many events are truncated or left out all together, the movie feels more like top 10 events of Napoleons life from 1794 to 1821 with Josephine as the sticky unifying backdrop. As an example it goes straight from the retreat from Moscow in 1812 to his abdication in 1814 without anything between.

-while Toulon is passable, the big battles shown (Austerlitz, Borodino and Waterloo) are atrocious and bear little resemblance to the real thing, they are more like medieval battles fought in Napoleonic gear. This is especially noticable with Waterloo to a ridiculous degree, even the Prussians enter the battlefield from the wrong side. Even with CGI the massive scope of the real battles are lost and they look more like brigade sized affairs.

-Napoleon leading cavalry charges in person at Borodino and Waterloo is......well......

-His abilities on the battlefield and as a commander is reduced to him shouting "Fire the cannon!" or "Send in the infantry!" most of the time, the marshals are almost totally absent or just decor in a few scenes.

-uniforms are surprisingly good, they do manage to show most of the changes from 1794 to 1815, few movies manage to do this due to the cost of costumes.

-Joaquin Phoenix is way too old for the role and it shows, especially in the early scenes.

 

Thanks

[TonyE]

20 hours ago, sunday said:

Bondarchuk still reigns supreme when battle scenes are mentioned, then.

Yep, Bondarchuk and his team fully understood how to portray massed battles and the scale of said battles on screen with grand sweeping camera shots and a background that is fully alive at all times even in small scenes, and did so within the technical limitations of that era. An honorable mention would go to Oliver Stone for the battle of Gaugamela in Alexander aswell. 

[sunday]

1 hour ago, TonyE said:

Yep, Bondarchuk and his team fully understood how to portray massed battles and the scale of said battles on screen with grand sweeping camera shots and a background that is fully alive at all times even in small scenes, and did so within the technical limitations of that era. An honorable mention would go to Oliver Stone for the battle of Gaugamela in Alexander aswell. 

Thanks for that sensible and informed opinion, Tony.

What do you think about Peter Jackson on his Lord of the Rings, especially the Battle of the Pelennor Fields? 

[futon]

ISTR that with the two towers, caverlry could not charge downhill in reality like they did at the end of the movie. I reckon there are some errors like that with ROTK battles as well.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Yeah, but they were headed by a Wizard, so +50 hoof adhesion.

 

[futon]

I guess Gandalf gave them a sign that they they could pull off a downhill charge ahead of time, otherwise they wouldn't have tried. 

[Ivanhoe]

On 11/27/2023 at 6:01 AM, TonyE said:

Napoleon, a short summary (SPOILER ALERT):

 

I stumbled across a Youtube video from a purported historian who was pretty critical. I know very little about Napoleon, but I'll wait for it to show up on one of the free TV channels.

One review vid I watched made the assertion that the "life of Napoleon" story arc needed to be a miniseries not a single movie.

 

[Ivanhoe]

4 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yeah, but they were headed by a Wizard, so +50 hoof adhesion.

 

I'm pretty sure Gandalf tilted the gravitational vector.

 

[Stargrunt6]

1 hour ago, Ivanhoe said:

I stumbled across a Youtube video from a purported historian who was pretty critical. I know very little about Napoleon, but I'll wait for it to show up on one of the free TV channels.

One review vid I watched made the assertion that the "life of Napoleon" story arc needed to be a miniseries not a single movie.

 

Was that Brandon F? Not that there are a few history buff youtubers. Including one literaly called "Hostory Buffs."

 

I might watch it just for the visuals in a big screen. Otherwise, one of my favorite reviewers, Armond White of the National Review, had few kind words for both it and Scott.

[R011]

9 hours ago, TonyE said:

Yep, Bondarchuk and his team fully understood how to portray massed battles and the scale of said battles on screen with grand sweeping camera shots and a background that is fully alive at all times even in small scenes, and did so within the technical limitations of that era. An honorable mention would go to Oliver Stone for the battle of Gaugamela in Alexander aswell. 

Unfortunately, the Russian Army is a bit too busy at the moment to reenact the Napoleonic Wars.

[NickM]

2 hours ago, R011 said:

Unfortunately, the Russian Army is a bit too busy at the moment to reenact the Napoleonic Wars.

You so Bad, Dave!

[Ivanhoe]

With the kind of money being thrown around in southern Europe, couldn't we just pay Putin to do something useful like suit up 25,000 or so soldiers and perform some glorious excess? 

 

[Ivanhoe]

2 hours ago, Stargrunt6 said:

Was that Brandon F? Not that there are a few history buff youtubers. Including one literaly called "Hostory Buffs."

 

I might watch it just for the visuals in a big screen. Otherwise, one of my favorite reviewers, Armond White of the National Review, had few kind words for both it and Scott.

Here's one of the reviews I watched;

 

[Stargrunt6]

2 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

Here's one of the reviews I watched;

 

I saw that one too. He's a fave. When I watched it, it further killed my enthusiasm to see it.  

 

He still needs to react to the final battle in SPR. 

[Stargrunt6]

2 hours ago, Ivanhoe said:

With the kind of money being thrown around in southern Europe, couldn't we just pay Putin to do something useful like suit up 25,000 or so soldiers and perform some glorious excess? 

 

No one's gonna believe that a bunch of +40 year olds were soldiers back then. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

13 hours ago, R011 said:

Unfortunately, the Russian Army is a bit too busy at the moment to reenact the Napoleonic Wars.

Oh I dont know, I think they are doing just fine at it, tbh...

[BansheeOne]

Word is that like with "Blade Runner" and particularly "Kingdom of Heaven", you'll need to wait for the director's cut of "Napoleon" to see an actual good movie, freed from the commercial requirement of a mass-compatible runtime.

[R011]

23 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Oh I dont know, I think they are doing just fine at it, tbh...

I think they were trying to reenact the Great Patriotic War but ended up reenacting the War to End All Wars.

[Stuart Galbraith]

17 minutes ago, R011 said:

I think they were trying to reenact the Great Patriotic War but ended up reenacting the War to End All Wars.

It was starting to look like it might evolve into Game of Thrones, but sadly that was a short lived plotline. And not enough casual female nudity for my tastes anyway.

[Stuart Galbraith]

19 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Word is that like with "Blade Runner" and particularly "Kingdom of Heaven", you'll need to wait for the director's cut of "Napoleon" to see an actual good movie, freed from the commercial requirement of a mass-compatible runtime.

But he is what, 82 now? It took over 20 years to sort Bladerunner out. Bless him, for I revere Ridley Scott, but I dont think he has that much time left to fix all his broken works.

Personally I love Kindom of Heaven, despite all the major plot holes. But this seems just a little too much for my tastes. Nobody is ever going to fix Prometheus after all.

[TonyE]

On 11/28/2023 at 12:11 PM, sunday said:

Thanks for that sensible and informed opinion, Tony.

What do you think about Peter Jackson on his Lord of the Rings, especially the Battle of the Pelennor Fields? 

Well, it is a fantasy battle so i cannot comment on the accuracy 🙂, but it looks great from a movie perspective even if some things as pointed out by other posters might be somewhat less than likely to work in the real world. If i recall correctly Jackson & WETA Workshop did some pioneering work with regards to using CGI & AI in portraying battles for LotR. 

An article from 2004 about the tech & CGI behind Alexander, it gives a good description on the revival of massed battle scenes in modern movie making: 'Alexander': Digitally Pushing the Sword and Sandal Genre | Animation World Network (awn.com)

[Stuart Galbraith]

I did like Alexander. Guilty pleasure perhaps.