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Billy and the Clonasaurus
Jan. 31st, 2009 11:20 amLa Règle du jeu (AKA Rules of the Game) (1939), Jean Renoir. Jan 28, 9:30pm. View count: One.
Jurassic Park (1993), Steven Spielberg. Jan 30, 10pm. View count: Three?
Rules of the Game we picked up due to its presence on a list of Best Movies of All Time, and its amusingly low price (used on Amazon). And, indeed, it's a really well-done piece. It slowly shades from what seems to be a fluffy rich-people drama into something more substantial, but without quite dropping the farce-inflected aspects. This makes the more serious moments (usually pretty French New Wave -style) stand out all the more.
Apparently this film was banned after a brief release, for reasons that largely escape me. IMDB says that the French government designated it 'bad for morale', and viewers seemingly hated it so much that theatres were threatened. I lack the cultural context, so this makes no sense to me. Orson Welles saw good things in it, though, which is very believable, as it's stylistically pretty reminiscent of his work.
Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs (CG) have aged surprisingly well, but the puppet versions still make me wince. Dinosaur puppets never work well (see: Walking With Dinosaurs). I think puppet motion is so recognizable that it can't be used for things like animals.
Spielberg is still knee-deep in his mindless worship of 'wonder' and 'emotions', very Captain Kirk style, at this time (he probably has not changed in that regard, but I haven't seen anything he's done recently, since I dislike his non-Jaws work). This means: lone dad-figure, resourceful and loving children (often displaying openmouthed wonder), and well-punished cynicism. You need to FEEL the science! Otherwise it won't WORK!
Another thing Spielberg persists in doing, and that I hate him for, is the misleading attentional shot. He does this over and over. A scene will be focused on an environmental thing, or a character, and other characters will be relating to that thing in ways that imply that they see what the camera sees (that they have the same information the viewer does). Then, after this, suddenly the camera will be in a slightly different location or at a different angle, and new information will come to light. The problem with this is that, if we believe in the attentional field of the characters in the scene, by all rights, they should have seen that thing already. This is a lighter variant of my most-hated Misleading Helicopter Scene in Close Encounters (where Dreyfuss mysteriously does not hear the very nearby helicopter until the soundtrack decides to let us in on the idea). The least you can do, Spielberg, is have your character turn around a little and notice the new thing, instead of placing them such that they would have been staring right at it all along.
Also bad are everyone's muddy arguments about why the park is doomed ('dinosaurs went extinct for a reason!' when they're really concerned with 'dinosaurs and humans aren't necessarily compatible'), the (aaagh) horrible chaos theory jibba-jabba, the embarrassing models for dinosaur sensory abilities and behavior.
Good: Laura Dern, now that I have seen Inland Empire.
Jurassic Park (1993), Steven Spielberg. Jan 30, 10pm. View count: Three?
Rules of the Game we picked up due to its presence on a list of Best Movies of All Time, and its amusingly low price (used on Amazon). And, indeed, it's a really well-done piece. It slowly shades from what seems to be a fluffy rich-people drama into something more substantial, but without quite dropping the farce-inflected aspects. This makes the more serious moments (usually pretty French New Wave -style) stand out all the more.
Apparently this film was banned after a brief release, for reasons that largely escape me. IMDB says that the French government designated it 'bad for morale', and viewers seemingly hated it so much that theatres were threatened. I lack the cultural context, so this makes no sense to me. Orson Welles saw good things in it, though, which is very believable, as it's stylistically pretty reminiscent of his work.
Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs (CG) have aged surprisingly well, but the puppet versions still make me wince. Dinosaur puppets never work well (see: Walking With Dinosaurs). I think puppet motion is so recognizable that it can't be used for things like animals.
Spielberg is still knee-deep in his mindless worship of 'wonder' and 'emotions', very Captain Kirk style, at this time (he probably has not changed in that regard, but I haven't seen anything he's done recently, since I dislike his non-Jaws work). This means: lone dad-figure, resourceful and loving children (often displaying openmouthed wonder), and well-punished cynicism. You need to FEEL the science! Otherwise it won't WORK!
Another thing Spielberg persists in doing, and that I hate him for, is the misleading attentional shot. He does this over and over. A scene will be focused on an environmental thing, or a character, and other characters will be relating to that thing in ways that imply that they see what the camera sees (that they have the same information the viewer does). Then, after this, suddenly the camera will be in a slightly different location or at a different angle, and new information will come to light. The problem with this is that, if we believe in the attentional field of the characters in the scene, by all rights, they should have seen that thing already. This is a lighter variant of my most-hated Misleading Helicopter Scene in Close Encounters (where Dreyfuss mysteriously does not hear the very nearby helicopter until the soundtrack decides to let us in on the idea). The least you can do, Spielberg, is have your character turn around a little and notice the new thing, instead of placing them such that they would have been staring right at it all along.
Also bad are everyone's muddy arguments about why the park is doomed ('dinosaurs went extinct for a reason!' when they're really concerned with 'dinosaurs and humans aren't necessarily compatible'), the (aaagh) horrible chaos theory jibba-jabba, the embarrassing models for dinosaur sensory abilities and behavior.
Good: Laura Dern, now that I have seen Inland Empire.
