On movies and storytelling
Nov. 20th, 2003 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
estepheiaFound this link in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jidabug's LJ: an article about how too many special effects ruin movies like Matrix Reloaded and Phantom Menace. I so agree! Which is why I'm looking forward to Master and Commander - which opens here in Germany next week. I think I'll try to get a babysitter and buy tickets for the first screening. Oh wheee
The article really sums up what's wrong with many (not all) big budget productions. The budget for the special effects far outweighs the amount of money poured into a decent screenplay. Even supposed geniuses with a vision need a beta. I stopped reading Stephen KIing novels years ago because I felt they needed a more brutal editor than they obviously had.
What the article doesn't mention is the opposite end of the movie spectrum: movies that have no guiding vision, that are slapped into shape by a dozen differnte producers who all have about what makes a movie a success, one thinks it's exploseions, the other swears it's a particular star, the third has another failsafe recipe. So they bring in a dozen script doctors who have to accomodate all these elements, and presto, we get the kind of jigsaw puzzle, where obviously someone made the pieces fit by squashing them flat through brute force.
Strangely enough, some of the most coherent films I've seen recently were animated pictures, namely Ice Age, Shrek, and Finding Nemo. The characters are funny little critters without boobs (um, ok there are boobs in Shrek) or puffed up lips (my Angelina Jolie pet peeve), or huge guns, or sunglasses, who have interesting stories and who change in the course of their stories.
Why, oh why, is a good screenplay so underrated?
jidabug's LJ: an article about how too many special effects ruin movies like Matrix Reloaded and Phantom Menace. I so agree! Which is why I'm looking forward to Master and Commander - which opens here in Germany next week. I think I'll try to get a babysitter and buy tickets for the first screening. Oh wheeeThe article really sums up what's wrong with many (not all) big budget productions. The budget for the special effects far outweighs the amount of money poured into a decent screenplay. Even supposed geniuses with a vision need a beta. I stopped reading Stephen KIing novels years ago because I felt they needed a more brutal editor than they obviously had.
What the article doesn't mention is the opposite end of the movie spectrum: movies that have no guiding vision, that are slapped into shape by a dozen differnte producers who all have about what makes a movie a success, one thinks it's exploseions, the other swears it's a particular star, the third has another failsafe recipe. So they bring in a dozen script doctors who have to accomodate all these elements, and presto, we get the kind of jigsaw puzzle, where obviously someone made the pieces fit by squashing them flat through brute force.
Strangely enough, some of the most coherent films I've seen recently were animated pictures, namely Ice Age, Shrek, and Finding Nemo. The characters are funny little critters without boobs (um, ok there are boobs in Shrek) or puffed up lips (my Angelina Jolie pet peeve), or huge guns, or sunglasses, who have interesting stories and who change in the course of their stories.
Why, oh why, is a good screenplay so underrated?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-11-20 07:48 am (UTC)And me! I saw the trailer for it in the cinema last Saturday, and I immediately had that sense that I really wanted to see that film. No sign of it here yet, though...I don't think it'll be here before Christmas.
Going to catch Love Actually tomorrow - not the most high-brow of films, but looking forward to it anyway.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-20 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-11-20 01:41 pm (UTC)