Kevin's Watch

You're right about all that, lorin. But that's what the movie was supposed to be. Cliche and groans of disbelief; fun air battles; laughing as Will Smith punches out an alien; Jeff Goldblum playing the same damned character he's played in 243 other movies; a guy who sacrifices himself as he flies his plane into the alien ship with sheer willpower; and my favorite moment: "Hey! That guy is Data! Look at his hair!!" Someone should have told you all that before you saw it, so you could have enjoyed it.

I get the intentional campiness. But it wasn't campy enough for it to be funny. Maybe it's just me but I hate it so much.

(I'm having flashes of Dune. Don't get mad at me.)

It's not a film I can get exited about one way or t'other Lorin; the only time I ever see it is after Christmas dinner and I fall asleep in the chair way before the end .

Agree with you, Lorin It was suppose to be a self satire thingie, but I think a lot of that was cut out and there wasn't enough left and too much of the movie was what they were initially poking at.

The Hobbit part 2 was awful. I really wanted to like it, but it was just action sequences and special effects and full of new action scenes, love stories and so that never happened in the book (and this is not even a book I really like so dearly, so I was not upset about deviations, just the type of deviations). The first film was better. This second one was just hollywood garbage, in my opinion.

I can't really argue with you, Ananda. It's been decades since I read the book, but I don't remember a lot of the stuff that took up time needlessly. BUT! Smaug was incredibly well done!! Just gorgeous to see! Worth the price of the ticket!

As I said in the Hobbit thread, the Extended Edition corrected many of my complaints with the film. I'm really looking forward to the last installment next week. This will be the last time we get a Jackson/Tolkien epic. And probably the last time I'll get to see a high frame rate movie (unless Cameron is serious about the next Avatar movie being HFR).

Zarathustra wrote:As I said in the Hobbit thread, the Extended Edition corrected many of my complaints with the film.

Oh, we will try that one, then. Thanks.

Fist, I agree that the films looks gorgeous. That is one thing they really did right.

The implication is Z. that the HFR is a significant thing, worth making some extra effort to see. Since this is exactly what I'd have to do [a round trip of 150 miles to my nearest HFR capable cinema] can you expand as to what it actually is that appears different when you see it, and perhaps more to the point would you make a detour of this degree in order to see a film in HFR that you could see in your own cinema 2 miles away.

Peter, since my local theater offers HFR only 2 miles away, the choice is easy for me. But I think I'd probably travel an hour or two to go see it, now that I know how good it is.

The effect is astonishing. It's a bigger leap forward than b&w-to-color, or 2d-to-3d, because it deals with the primary illusion of motion pictures (see below). I can watch b&w or 2d movies and enjoy them just fine, without being distracted by their "deficiencies" ... except in one regard, which HFR corrects. In order to understand it conceptually, you must remember how moving pictures create their most basic illusion, i.e. movement. This happens by rapidly showing still pictures that differ from each other in small increments. Usually, this illusion is pretty seamless, until there is a lot of fast action or--and this is a bigger deal than it sounds--the camera pans across the scene. I think the technical term for the distortion is "judder." Whenever a camera pan happens, the entire illusion of motion breaks down so that you can see this blurring, distracting, steplike distortion. Directors will often limit these kinds of shots in a movie for precisely this reason. But they're very grandiose kinds of shots, so sometimes they go ahead and include them anyway, despite the judder. With HFR, you don't have to worry about it, and it frees the director to include whatever kinds of camera motions he chooses.

The effect is a seamless, distortion-free picture of hyper-real clarity that can't be compared to any other visual effect you've ever seen (except reality itself). The difference is not only seen in camera pans, but anytime there is fast motion or lots of moving elements. For instance, the battle at the Mines of Moria in the first Hobbit movie had thousands of moving/fighting figures. Each one was etched in such vivid clarity, it was almost like taking a psychedelic drug--almost overwhelming. After seeing blurry motion for 42 years that I've been watching movies, it was simply breathtaking.

As an added bonus, the 3-d effect was much more realistic, too. I think 3-d usually exacerbates the blurriness problems of motion pictures, so that I actually prefer 2-d in most cases. Not so with HFR.

I think this film falls on the border of hated, in the bored and disappointed realm at least...Hunger Games.

With all of the excitement surrounding the first film and given that the plot definitely falls in my wheel house I was shocked to discover that I wasn't entertained by the story or direction of the film. I won't go into all the details but suffice to say it just didn't work for me.

In addition I found myself actually disparaging the movie, often referring to the main character as "Cat Piss Beetlebrox".

My wife however loved the movie, watched the sequel and would really like to go and see Mockingjay Part 1.

I don't think I can muster the patience for it.

Thanks Z. That is pretty similar to the account given by the only other person I know who's ever seen an HFR production [the first 'Hobbit'] and makes me think that this is a thing that I should make the effort [as a film buff] to see at least once.

aTOMic - HG 1 was ok[ish] but I thought in the second film the series was beginning to 'find itself'. I'm up for the third film......