the_fantastic_ms_fox (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2008-01-28 10:05 pm
the_fantastic_ms_fox) wrote2008-01-28 10:05 pm
(no subject)
I am pleased with Cloverfield. Walking home I see the housing projects near the railway overwalk, and feel a touch of alarm. Same goes for an open park. I realize that it has managed to partially recode my perception of "urban environment" so as to include "danger!"
What I liked:
Partial perspectives are the way to tell all stories where the audience is not aware of the outcome. Some stories are told "omnisciently," as macro-history often is. (Myths imitae macro history - or is it the other way around?). Macro-history can approach all-seeing as it can be patched together from thousands, if not millions, of perspectives. In this case, the outcome is no secret; any suspense is an imposed plot device; a sort of dishonesty. City-smashing monster/disaster movies can be especially bad at this as - if you can see what's going on in an immediate disaster, it's not as alarming. Cloverfield on the other hand uses this to give you an impression of what an unknown disaster is like: confusing, bewildering. We don't know what it is, what it wants or if it's possible to survive, let alone how we'd do it. This is combined with deliberate in-story obfuscation (as opposed to imposed suspense) to maximize the feeling of helpless bewilderment. Top marks here.
Good CG/props.
Social response to disaster scenario was realistic. The portrayal of the military was blunt but not sociopathic.
Beautiful shots of New York.
At the end, you still don't know what's going on.
What I would change.
Use a head-mounted videorecorder in place of a camcorder, or some kind of high-end consumer self-steadying camera, a competent videographer-character to steady the frame, or have the tape you're watching "specially edited." Do something so that a sizable portion of the population can watch the movie without getting too motion sick to... watch the movie. When you have made your movie unwatchable, you have messed up.
When critics describe a monster as being a product of H.R. Geiger, Ishiro Honda and H.P. Lovecraft, there had better be something barely recognizable as life. Aw well, this isn't the movie's fault. The monsters are good, but the design is not as unworldly as I would suggest. The monster sounds were too conventionally Hollywood. There's a deleted chunk of audio in Alien, when they picked up the distress signal and you get to hear it. That sounds like otherworldly noise. Get that and splice it in.
(On that note, can anyone find this audio track? It's no more than twenty seconds long and I haven't heard it in years.)
What I liked:
Partial perspectives are the way to tell all stories where the audience is not aware of the outcome. Some stories are told "omnisciently," as macro-history often is. (Myths imitae macro history - or is it the other way around?). Macro-history can approach all-seeing as it can be patched together from thousands, if not millions, of perspectives. In this case, the outcome is no secret; any suspense is an imposed plot device; a sort of dishonesty. City-smashing monster/disaster movies can be especially bad at this as - if you can see what's going on in an immediate disaster, it's not as alarming. Cloverfield on the other hand uses this to give you an impression of what an unknown disaster is like: confusing, bewildering. We don't know what it is, what it wants or if it's possible to survive, let alone how we'd do it. This is combined with deliberate in-story obfuscation (as opposed to imposed suspense) to maximize the feeling of helpless bewilderment. Top marks here.
Good CG/props.
Social response to disaster scenario was realistic. The portrayal of the military was blunt but not sociopathic.
Beautiful shots of New York.
At the end, you still don't know what's going on.
What I would change.
Use a head-mounted videorecorder in place of a camcorder, or some kind of high-end consumer self-steadying camera, a competent videographer-character to steady the frame, or have the tape you're watching "specially edited." Do something so that a sizable portion of the population can watch the movie without getting too motion sick to... watch the movie. When you have made your movie unwatchable, you have messed up.
When critics describe a monster as being a product of H.R. Geiger, Ishiro Honda and H.P. Lovecraft, there had better be something barely recognizable as life. Aw well, this isn't the movie's fault. The monsters are good, but the design is not as unworldly as I would suggest. The monster sounds were too conventionally Hollywood. There's a deleted chunk of audio in Alien, when they picked up the distress signal and you get to hear it. That sounds like otherworldly noise. Get that and splice it in.
(On that note, can anyone find this audio track? It's no more than twenty seconds long and I haven't heard it in years.)
no subject
no subject
I think.. they could have done without the love story, however.. it didn't really add much to the movie but cheese, in my opinion.
Movies can be groundbreaking, but G-d help us if we deviate from heteronormative heroic narratives
Re: Movies can be groundbreaking, but G-d help us if we deviate from heteronormative heroic narrativ