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asterisk8 said:

A director's job isn't just to make a film look good. It's also about getting great performances out of the actors - something George Lucas absolutely cannot do. Abrams is much better at that.

Sidney Lumet said that ultimately, the DP and the lighting crew can get the shot right, the most important thing a director can do is work with actors. 

Watched The African Queen. Great movie.

Hard to believe it's so epic, and only and hour forty five long.

Re-watched Dog Day Afternoon. Such a great film.  Amazing actors, great filming techniques; it really does feel like a pseudo-documentary. Very groundbreaking for the time, only French Connection had really done that before, at least that effectively. I appreciated the comedy more this time around, as I wasn't fully prepared for that element the first time I saw it, and the sex-change plot point felt less jarring and random now that I knew it was coming. Also cool to see a very, very young Lance Henrikson. Pacino over-acts in one scene, but overall I miss young Pacino--he gave very quiet, introverted performances that were a joy to watch. Ever since Scarface it seems like he is almost parodying the icon of Al Pacino. Same thing happened to DeNiro, with a few exceptions. John Cazale is fantastic, such a shame he only made a handful of films, he could have been a major player if he had kept going, instead of a 1970s supporting character actor. He's the best actor in every film he is in, and that's no small compliment when your entire resume consists of Godfather, Godfather II, Dog Day Afternoon and Deer Hunter.

Super 8 - Fun nostalgia ride, even though the end was slightly disappointing.  7/8 reels.

Scream - Fun nostalgia ride, even though I don't normally like slasher films.  6/8 rules.

EyeShotFirst said:

TheBoost said:

Sidney Lumet said that ultimately, the DP and the lighting crew can get the shot right, the most important thing a director can do is work with actors. 

I just hope he get's unknowns for the movie. I don't know if I want to see a bunch of it-people in this movie. It should be a movie that creates it-people. I liked Super-8, because I had never seen these kids before, and their performances were pretty damn good.

I agree. 

I think the cast of Star Trek 09 was a good in that regard. Chris Pine was a relative unknown and Quinto was a TV actor. 

The opening sequence of Scream is so mean spirited and sadistic (as a film sequence beyond what the characters are doing) that it really spoiled the whole film for me.

I never saw any of the sequels either.

Bingowings said:

The opening sequence of Scream is so mean spirited and sadistic (as a film sequence beyond what the characters are doing) that it really spoiled the whole film for me.

Can you elaborate? I'm really puzzled.

Lincoln - 7/10 - A nice film, but not a masterpiece. The acting, costuming, set design, and script are all masterful (save Tommy Lee Jones who was just himself, like every role he plays) but it just lacked a certain something I can't quite put my finger on, but I'm blaming Spielberg. I guess I was hoping for something a little more daring, more artistic, and I think I expected Lincoln to seem not quite so heroic and "perfect", for lack of a better word. DDL was amazing, and brought me the closest to Abraham Lincoln the man that I think I'll ever come, but I just have a gut impression that Lincoln was a little rougher around the edges, in private a little less polished, less agreeable and magnanimous and ever-ready with the perfect thing to say or do in every situation. What made Lincoln who he was, and better than his rivals to lead the country at this time, was exactly that lack of polish and culture. This film Lincoln, like all the others, just seems a tad too ideal. We're still looking at what we hope, or need, Lincoln to be, instead of the flawed human being he really was. Still, an excellent film.

asterisk8 said:

Bingowings said:

The opening sequence of Scream is so mean spirited and sadistic (as a film sequence beyond what the characters are doing) that it really spoiled the whole film for me.

Can you elaborate? I'm really puzzled.

 

Lincoln - 7/10 - A nice film, but not a masterpiece. The acting, costuming, set design, and script are all masterful (save Tommy Lee Jones who was just himself, like every role he plays) but it just lacked a certain something I can't quite put my finger on, but I'm blaming Spielberg. I guess I was hoping for something a little more daring, more artistic, and I think I expected Lincoln to seem not quite so heroic and "perfect", for lack of a better word. DDL was amazing, and brought me the closest to Abraham Lincoln the man that I think I'll ever come, but I just have a gut impression that Lincoln was a little rougher around the edges, in private a little less polished, less agreeable and magnanimous and ever-ready with the perfect thing to say or do in every situation. What made Lincoln who he was, and better than his rivals to lead the country at this time, was exactly that lack of polish and culture. This film Lincoln, like all the others, just seems a tad too ideal. We're still looking at what we hope, or need, Lincoln to be, instead of the flawed human being he really was. Still, an excellent film.

Well, it's a young girl being psychologically tortured and then gutted. It's one of the best horror sequences I've seen, and the perfect start to a modern masterpiece--a scene that is equal parts horrific and clever, and that is basically how the first Scream was. It was precursed by Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which operated in a similar vein. "Meta" before there was such a term. Brilliant films. The Scream sequels sucked pretty hard compared to the genius of that first film.

^ What he said but I found it distasteful and heavy handed for a bit of silly fun like Scream. I know the antagonist is meant to be a nasty person but the scene instead just makes me feel the writers are.

I find Se7en similarly conceptually sadistic and misogynist (not to mention pretentious) for what amounts to a Doctor Phibes film without the jokes. The committee meeting where they thought up the Lust murder must have been a giggle.

Interesting, I never thought of Scream as a bit of silly fun. It actually scared me quite a bit when I saw it in the theater at 15. I'm still puzzled at how it's distasteful that a character in a horror movie is tortured and killed. Isn't that the point of a slasher movie?

At the risk of starting a rant, I think it's a mistake to transfer the thoughts and behaviors of fictional characters onto their creators. Writers have always given their creations opinions and ideas that they themselves do not hold. It's the same sort of thing that's happening to Tarantino right now with Django Unchained. I can't stand QT as a person, but I don't think he's a racist for putting "the n-word" in the mouths of his characters.

It's all relative, I would guess that after Last House on the Left and Hills have eyes, Craven probably thought he was being pretty soft. 

I thought the point of slasher films was to be exciting.

Scream is a comedy horror film that plays with slasher tropes.

So having a sequence that seems to have wandered in from Wolf Creek (another repellant film) at the beginning, in my opinion, up ends everything the film tries to be about after that scene.

It might have worked better as the end of the film.

We could then have had a film which mocks the conventions of slasher films ending with the sobering thought that sadistic murder isn't really funny.

Instead we have a rather sadistic scene and then we are supposed to giggle at the notion of murder for the rest of the picture.

It just doesn't work for me.

The original Scream is a horror film with a sense of humour, but people went to see it because it was frightening and gory. It has wit and cleverness in it, but it still is a very suspenceful thriller. It scared me and most people who saw it when it was new--it was known as a scary movie. By Scream 3 it became a "silly bit of fun", but the first film was quite dark and brutal in places. It was meant to be a slasher itself that turned the genre on it's head by being self-aware. Same with New Nightmare--a very scary and dark film in places.

I didn't find Scream remotely frightening or horrific just amusing and mildly exciting for the most part (a bit like a Whedon vehicle) the beginning however was just offensive to me.

Yeah, I agree. It was a scene to set the tone, and even though the tone lightened in places, it was still a slasher film in the end. It's like An American Werewolf in London. In places, a very amusing film. But also very scary and violent.

American Werewolf is pretty much a horror comedy to me.

As much as Shaun Of The Dead is.

So it's pretty much a case of different eyes seeing differently.

But I did find the beginning of Scream offensive beyond the characters being in character.

The appeal of slasher flicks has always kind of been lost on me. When I was a kid the posters would give me the willies, but upon watching my first one I felt it was little more than watching two-dimensional characters getting picked off one-by-one for the glee of it. I kind of feel the way about all slasher flicks how Bingo feels about the beginning of Scream. They just strike me as little more than a sadistic thrill.

As a teenager, the first time a date snuggled up next to me and buried her head in my shoulder during a scary bit, I decided I had discovered their true reason for existence.

Though it could be argued zombie movies offer the same kind of sadistic thrill as slasher films, I really do enjoy them. Perhaps its the world gone to chaos/survival aspect of them I appreciate. Double standards, I suppose.

Most of them aren't much more violent than the average Michael Bay or Arnold Schwarzenneger film. The special gore effects are part of the spectacle, just like gasoline explosions are part of Arnie's thing. CG gore=bad slasher, just like CG explosions=bad Arnie film. Part of it is the thrill aspect, but also part of it is the special effects aspects, it's fun to see what they come up with, knowing it's all faked. Whenever you deal with horror you are dealing with macabre subject matter though. Stuff like so-called "torture porn" is another matter, because the focus there is on human suffering and not thrills, suspense, special effects (or even character development in many cases).

Probably the best slasher of all time is Nightmare on Elm Street. It has pretty good characters, great visual effects, incredibly gory special effects, genuine horror elements, but also real scares and thrills. That's also why Temple of Doom is my favourite Indy film. There's something about that combination of thrills and darkness that you can't replicate in another genre. In some ways they are a little sadistic, but there is a level of artificiality created by the fantasy aspect that allows it to be real, but not real-real. To me, a film like Munich and films like that are way more unsettling, because it's  realistic in ways that could--and have--happened. Even in the opening scene of Scream, it's all so stylized and unrealistic--even though it is presented in a realistic way--that it still is ultimately a fantasy. People don't go around in Halloween costumes making murderous prank phone calls on babysitters with elaborate set-ups and death displays. Most horror films are just modern day fantasies designed to scare you, or impress you with special effects. Mike Myers, Jason, Freddie, even the killers of Scream, they are practically mythological personas in some ways for the way they embody death and the elaborate, often convoluted scenarios they are born from and kill with. Arnold is the modern variation of Heracles, Freddie the modern variation of Medusa.

The difference between a decent slasher film and the beginning of Scream is best summed up by this.

Well look what I started.