Watch, Watched, Watching: From Scott Civil Wars to Christmas Movie Wars

[Zorral]

This is fun, an adventure-drama serial, not, um, '100% historically accurat shall we say? that provides some spectacular desert scenery and light; an excellent series for a Christmas week watch -- Tutankhamun (2016). It begins in the year 1905. Among the actors are Sam Neil and Max Irons. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, Conflicting Thought said:

about the vfx subcontraction, i dont know if that is a huge factor in cost reduction,for example  i know the  mayority of holywood movies that have costs superior to 100 mill have so ugly vfx cuz they subcontract and demand  of the workers that they do the vfx in very short times

I think the primary reason you have ever expanding VFX budgets and a terrible final product is because you have film makers who don’t really know what they’re doing and studios who insist on reworking things right up to the end. 

This has been documented. 

[Nictarion]

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

The early 1990s may have been peak film.  Original, well crafted material that was also popular with a broader audience.  You can definitively debate these things but it arguably has the definitive gangster movie (Goodfellas), the definitive western (the Unforgiven), the definitive serial killer movie (the Silence of the Lambs), the definitive movie about the Holocaust (Schindler's List, always relevant but seems even more timely currently) and the definitive whatever type of movie Pulp Fiction is (just calling it a Tarantino movie seems limiting but it is his magnus opus).

Definitely my favorite decade for films overall (70’s are a close second), but I think 2007 is probably still the single best year for films of my lifetime. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

6 hours ago, Padraig said:

The early 1990s may have been peak film.  Original, well crafted material that was also popular with a broader audience.  You can definitively debate these things but it arguably has the definitive gangster movie (Goodfellas), the definitive western (the Unforgiven), the definitive serial killer movie (the Silence of the Lambs), the definitive movie about the Holocaust (Schindler's List, always relevant but seems even more timely currently) and the definitive whatever type of movie Pulp Fiction is (just calling it a Tarantino movie seems limiting but it is his magnus opus).

It’s easy to forget there was a lot of crap made in the 1990’s. But yeah, there were some good ones too. 

[Padraig]

9 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Definitely my favorite decade for films overall (70’s are a close second), but I think 2007 is probably still the single best year for films of my lifetime. 

That's all fair.  Harder to pick one year but I was impressed that each year in the early 90s had (at least) one excellent movie.  And yes, with that came a lot of poor stuff, but that can be suitably ignored.

[Veltigar]

13 hours ago, dbunting said:

Not sure how familiar you are with Reacher but that is exactly what the vast majority of the books are. He steps off a bus, helps a stranger and it turns out to be a big thing.  For a series it is good and bad. Each season is new characters except for Reacher, so salaries are low, but bad because you aren't as invested in them.

I'm not really familiar with Reacher per se (though I have to say this for the series, I'm intrigued enough to buy one of the books), but I think I have read a few series that follow that template. The one that comes to my mind the most as a comparison are Bernard Cromwell's Saxon Stories and it's due to the familiarity with the concept that I'm a bit worried for the future of the series.

I don't think it's a coincidence they decided to adapt the two books that featured a personal connection to Reacher first. Usually, these kind of adventure novels just work better if on top of the fighting and mystery, there is something to be learned about our protagonist.

A bit similar to how in the Saxon Stories

Spoiler

Uthred has a pattern where he has to safe the dream of England every novel and faces some threat. It's comfort reading, but it's the few stories where he actually gets to do something personal like reclaim Bamburgh or work together with his estranged son that stand out.

I'm enjoying this a lot, but I'm not sure whether I'll be enjoying this for 10 seasons, especially if there is no evolution in either our main character or in his relationship to others.

Contrast that with something like Justified, which had a seasonal arc, but also had the wider story of Rayland and his relationship to Harlan and its inhabitants that carried over and accrued worth over time. It makes for a far more satisfying series in the end I think.

16 hours ago, Ran said:

Per The Numbers, 27 films were released this year with a budget of $100 million or higher. The average budget was $172 million. The highest budget was Fast X at a whopping $340 million.

31 films were released with a budget of $80 million (The Creator's reported budget) or higher, so just four films in that $80 to $100 million range (the others were Renfield, Ferrari, and Trolls Band Together.)

It's depressing to think that Fast X cost 340 million USD. If you ask me to give you a top 10 of worst films of the year, I'm pretty sure it will be high on that list.

Cool to know that the average was 172 million USD. Even better than double then for The Creator.

16 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

 

Regarding the budget, has anyone done an analysis of how that was done? For example, does the Japanese government provide material assistance or subsidy for productions like this? Did they subcontract the VFX work to some sweatshop economy? Did the actors get paid? Does the exchange rate to the yen factor in at all?

No analysis per se, but I was struck by the fact that Toho took a relatively long time to develop Godzilla Minus one. Apparently the previous Japanese Godzilla film (which I haven't seen), also got great reviews and Toho was scared to come out with a lukewarm successor.

So, they did something which I don't think Hollywood knows how to do, they took their time and allowed the creative team to explore interesting options for a follow-up. That certainly helped to keep the budget tight and probably also explains in part the film's high quality.

One of the main flaws in project management is that leadership is usually allergic to planning, despite the fact that good planning in advance is relatively cheap (just a few people in a room with laptops and a whiteboard as per the stereotype) and saves you a lot of money down the road. 

I guess Hollywood, being under constant pressure to pipe out content, takes more of an "agile" approach where they don't spend enough time in pre-production to allow ideas to germinate properly and planning to be done correctly. The first leads to half-cooked films with bad scripts and shallow characters, the latter leads to reshoots, last minute interference in VFX work and the like which will massively inflate the budget.

16 hours ago, Ran said:

So, yeah, about double is right. Edwards is very, very good at figuring out pipelines to get incredible results within a tight budget. He's done it again and again. I remember years ago suggesting HBO talk to Edwards and hire him as a VFX lead, he was so good at stretching a dollar. Obviously, he went on to bigger and better things than VFX... but I'm hoping we'll see more from him. I really think CDPR should be talking to him about their live action Cyberpunk 2077 TV project.

To build further on my reply to Deadlines, perhaps Edwards just has a clearer vision of what he wants from the start due to using a better/longer pre-production or planning process. If he didn't have delays or reshoots for The Creator, he could throw every bit of money on the screen, instead of spending money in vain on two alternative versions of the CGI blue beam slugfest à la Marvel.

16 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

I'd say it is, to be fair. GZ-1 looks insane, but you can also see how it was a very trim production with the fx money aimed at a few specific moments. A pretty solid portion of it is either just in a single room in a house or on the little wooden boat they have, and even the attack on Tokyo shows one scene of destruction then implies the rest. Whereas I'm not sure there's a second of The Creator where the money isn't on screen. 
 

Fair, I didn't think of it like that.

Edited December 27, 2023 by Veltigar

[Zorral]

8 hours ago, Veltigar said:

Spoiler

Uthred has a pattern where he has to safe the dream of England every novel and faces some threat. It's comfort reading, but it's the few stories where he actually gets to do something personal like reclaim Bamburgh or work together with his estranged son that stand out.

 

Uhtred and Reacher have little in common other than neither can resist helping the helpless and a sense of honor.  Well, yes, those who have fought with him and been helped by him, like Reacher don't forget, but then, one wouldn't, and that doesn't change with heroes across worlds and time does it?

The most significant difference is that Reacher never ever comes to close to the breaking that Uhtred experiences while enslaved in the middle of the series. Uhtred's world doesn't really change, just who runs it does.  During the course of this very long Reacher series a lot of fundamentals about living and navigating our world has.  Which, it seems to me, a positive for the television series, is they attempt to update to that, recognizing that even Reacher, as did Longmire, for another white knight example, had to, or for another, Jesse Stone in his series -- they had to get their own fones.

Also, advice, don't begin reading Reacher in the middle of the series, begin with the first one.  (For me personally the first one was a shocker in a way it wouldn't be to most -- a lot of it took place in and behind my building where we still live -- it isn't the same now as then, but he got where we lived then almost brick-by-brick -- and holy cow, that long-ago bakery!  I'd no idea until he got there in the narrative.  Reviewers didn't mention it. Ha!)

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

14 hours ago, Veltigar said:

I guess Hollywood, being under constant pressure to pipe out content, takes more of an "agile" approach where they don't spend enough time in pre-production to allow ideas to germinate properly and planning to be done correctly. The first leads to half-cooked films with bad scripts and shallow characters, the latter leads to reshoots, last minute interference in VFX work and the like which will massively inflate the budget.

To build further on my reply to Deadlines, perhaps Edwards just has a clearer vision of what he wants from the start due to using a better/longer pre-production or planning process. If he didn't have delays or reshoots for The Creator, he could throw every bit of money on the screen, instead of spending money in vain on two alternative versions of the CGI blue beam slugfest à la Marvel.

Marvel is known for making significant changes late in the process. That’s a consequence of studio driven films that are aggressively tested and focus-grouped to bang them into shape. For the most part, it’s been incredibly successful, but it’s a really expensive way to make movies and it’s very hard in the creatives who do the work. It also often result in films that aren’t all that memorable. 

I would bet that a significant chunk of what gets spent on a lot of these types of franchise films is on what doesn’t end up on screen. 

And yeah, having a vision and sticking to it, doing the planning, putting in the hours on pre-production, is going to be more economical in the long run. 

I’d still be interested to know how much help they got from the Japanese taxpayer. I mean, any country that has a functioning movie business usually gets some kind of help; often in the form of tax rebates if nothing else. 

it might also be possible that they re-purposed some pre-existing digital assets for the vfx heavy sequences. I mean, that’s one of the major advantages of using digital assets. You build something and file it away. Rinse and repeat a few times and suddenly you’ve got a pretty impressive library.

I think we saw this with DC: League of Super Pets. That movie had a budget of $90 million. I had a hard time believing an animated feature film of that quality with that IP and that cast could be made for that little money. Shit, does The Rock even get out of bed for less than $10 million?  Then I saw it.

I am 99% certain I’ve seen some of those characters in other films. That pig and that squirrel looked really familiar. 

Edited December 28, 2023 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

What’d you guys think of Euphoria ? Worth watching ? I think id feel like a pervert for watching it at home in front of family lol

[dbunting]

4 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

What’d you guys think of Euphoria ? Worth watching ? I think id feel like a pervert for watching it at home in front of family lol

S1 is pretty good, and yes definitely would be awkward at times to say the least. S2 IMO dropped quite a bit.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I just finished season 2 of Heels.  It was an interesting drama.  But, the final scene didn’t make me want to watch a 3rd season, which is fine as I now see that the series was canceled one day after the season finale aired.

[Annara Snow]

12 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

What’d you guys think of Euphoria ? Worth watching ? I think id feel like a pervert for watching it at home in front of family lol

Eh... a very mixed bag.

If you can get past the fact the show has adult actors engagining in adult behavior and pretending to be teens and that the whole show would make much more sense if it was about college rather than high school, Season 1 is pretty good.

The two specials that aired between the seasons are the best thing the show has ever done (one is focused on Rue and it's just Zendaya and Colman Domingo, the other is fully focused on Hunter Schaeffer's Jules, was co-written by her and is even better).

Season 2 has some moments, but overall it's a mess. Interesting storylines dropped and the best characters sidelined because the actors didn't get along with the showrunner. Instead we get some terrible storylines. There's only one really good episode and it's the one focused fully on Zendaya's character.

Edited December 28, 2023 by Annara Snow

[Ran]

The penultimate episode of the 2nd season was very good as well, IMO, even though the play it features was absolutely reality-defying just in terms of how much it would have cost to produce it. But I enjoy the metatextual play-within-a-play thing.

2nd season is definitely more unfocused than the 1st.

It's an incredibly stylish show, though, and has a number of actors that are pretty magnetic. One of them, Angus Cloud, died by suicide recently, sadly.

 

[Veltigar]

18 hours ago, Zorral said:

Uhtred and Reacher have little in common other than neither can resist helping the helpless and a sense of honor.  Well, yes, those who have fought with him and been helped by him, like Reacher don't forget, but then, one wouldn't, and that doesn't change with heroes across worlds and time does it?

The most significant difference is that Reacher never ever comes to close to the breaking that Uhtred experiences while enslaved in the middle of the series. Uhtred's world doesn't really change, just who runs it does.  During the course of this very long Reacher series a lot of fundamentals about living and navigating our world has.  Which, it seems to me, a positive for the television series, is they attempt to update to that, recognizing that even Reacher, as did Longmire, for another white knight example, had to, or for another, Jesse Stone in his series -- they had to get their own fones.

Also, advice, don't begin reading Reacher in the middle of the series, begin with the first one.  (For me personally the first one was a shocker in a way it wouldn't be to most -- a lot of it took place in and behind my building where we still live -- it isn't the same now as then, but he got where we lived then almost brick-by-brick -- and holy cow, that long-ago bakery!  I'd no idea until he got there in the narrative.  Reviewers didn't mention it. Ha!)

I'll have to take your word for it, since I have only read one of the two series. What I see on screen so far however, does strike me as two characters cut from the same action hero cloth. Just different settings which have somewhat of an effect on the character's outlook, but I have a hard time believing that Reacher's introduction to the internet will fundamentally change his character. It just limits some of the things he can do, while enabling other stuff he couldn't do before.

15 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Marvel is known for making significant changes late in the process. That’s a consequence of studio driven films that are aggressively tested and focus-grouped to bang them into shape. For the most part, it’s been incredibly successful, but it’s a really expensive way to make movies and it’s very hard in the creatives who do the work. It also often result in films that aren’t all that memorable. 

I would bet that a significant chunk of what gets spent on a lot of these types of franchise films is on what doesn’t end up on screen. 

And yeah, having a vision and sticking to it, doing the planning, putting in the hours on pre-production, is going to be more economical in the long run. 

The thing is, they could do the focus grouping in a far earlier stage as well, there is no need to do it so late in the process. It would again involve a slight increase in spending during planning phase making mock-ups and perhaps employing voice actors to give some added bite to the story, but they could reasonably show something to an audience long before the VFX boys actually start working on something. 

[Heartofice]

12 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

The thing is, they could do the focus grouping in a far earlier stage as well, there is no need to do it so late in the process. It would again involve a slight increase in spending during planning phase making mock-ups and perhaps employing voice actors to give some added bite to the story, but they could reasonably show something to an audience long before the VFX boys actually start working on something.

I’ve been to a couple of test screening that were pre FX work, and it’s very easy to tell whether something is good or bad from that stage.

Having said that, I don’t think those movies i saw were salvagable, and I have real hard time thinking that making a movie is like creating an app.
 

You can’t just put out a BETA version and iterate till you get it right. Mostly you need to make something great a long time before audiences see it. It’s pretty Waterfall. 

[TheLastWolf]

THE WIRE S5

The weakest of the bunch is still light years ahead of the rest of TV even after so many years and I'll bet good coin it will be so forever as I can't deny that TV/Cinema as an art form is dead and dying and would love to see myself proven wrong anytime. 

Spoiler

That Bubbles scene had me tearing up like a fool. And unfair to Dukie man, a punch to the gut. I mean the rests' arcs were more organic. Why'd they have to fuck up such a bright kid while Nay gets to escape a spoiled bratty bully corner kid existence. Too bad they didn't plan for a Bubs successor early on. Prez's eyes said it all. Manh. And good ol dumb Herc made Marlo walk, whatever happened to the camera.

Spoiler

Ok don't tell me the co-op went with the 10 mil deal. I mean there was still Slim->Avon->Sergei and/or Slim->[Prop Joe]->Greeks or fuck it, its a buyers market and no self respecting drug wholesaler going to be sitting on his hands with tonnes of 'roin, more on the way hungry market . The meet either just happened by mutual need or Avon set it up or Slim did finally get around to the Greeks from his time as Joe's right. Marlo nobody can slum it with his Caribbean savings and mope over his lost cred.

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by TheLastWolf

[Rippounet]

Finished Beacon 23. A bit hard to criticize: it was a fun watch, but I kinda feel it didn't live up to its potential, and ends up a disappointment.

It's a show full of paradoxes. The setting and narrative structures are really clever, but there's something off about characterization, and the way the plot is resolved is rather unsatisfying. Some dialogues make for amazing sci-fi, with a good mix of the informal routine and the reflection, but the lack of balance between the two gives us very clumsy scenes. The dialogue and the actors work very hard to keep the tension, so much so that the characterization is weak and lacks internal coherence. The plot is interesting, but it over-uses mystery as an element - or perhaps it is that the writer is really bad at exposition.

The whole thing is a bit clunky. It can prove rivetting, but also boring or annoying. I'd say that oddly enough, the best moments were those focusing on "side" characters, especially Bart's story. And while Lena Headey gives us a good overall performance, either she wasn't the right choice for the role, or she missed a dimension of her character, because she struggles to make the whole plot truly believable.
 

Spoiler

I guess it annoys me that in the end the show isn't trying to say something meaningful. It keeps you guessing, but doesn't provide much payoff - I found the resolution satisfying neither in terms of plot nor in terms of emotion.
Two problems I have are:
- If Aster's death is a tragedy, it's a shame it was so hard to empathize with her. The show seemed to have gone out of its way to make her hard to like.
- If Aster had the message "from the start," it makes her mother the main obstacle to it being known and possibly understood... But we can't possibly blame her for what she did...

Plot points are left hanging, like Olaf's intentions and motivations, as well as the greater story of this "world" with ISA, QTA, the colonies...

It's difficult to criticize a show that wasn't actually trying to be deep, while having all the codes of depth, with symbols and themes that ended up being under-used. The absence of message in the end feels a bit... nihilistic? Promising meaning only to withdraw it feels a bit cruel. One might say it's artistic in the sense that it does make an impact, but it's a bit light on easthetics to claim an artistic nature imho. It ends up doing a lot (mystery/sci-fi/philosophical... ), but because it largely fails in its multiple dimensions, that abundance turns into a flaw.

I'm starting to think Howey is someone whose structure is miles ahead of his plots.

 

[WarGalley]

7 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

  Hide contents

  Hide contents

Ok don't tell me the co-op went with the 10 mil deal. I mean there was still Slim->Avon->Sergei and/or Slim->[Prop Joe]->Greeks or fuck it, its a buyers market and no self respecting drug wholesaler going to be sitting on his hands with tonnes of 'roin, more on the way hungry market . The meet either just happened by mutual need or Avon set it up or Slim did finally get around to the Greeks from his time as Joe's right.

 

 

The problem with that is it’s outside of the character they establish with Slim. Slim’s a simple, rough and tumble kind of person. He’s not ambitious or a scheme maker which he admits to when he turns down Marlo as being the East side contact for the co-op (“I ain’t cut out to be no CEO”). He’s basically a high level soldier, built to follow orders but not make strategic decisions and he knows it.

Edited December 29, 2023 by WarGalley

[TheLastWolf]

3 hours ago, WarGalley said:

 

The problem with that is it’s outside of the character they establish with Slim. Slim’s a simple, rough and tumble kind of person. He’s not ambitious or a scheme maker which he admits to when he turns down Marlo as being the East side contact for the co-op (“I ain’t cut out to be no CEO”). He’s basically a high level soldier, built to follow orders but not make strategic decisions and he knows it.

There was enough time to step up with the governor's election two quarters away. Necessity could act as catalyst. And it was Rick at the helm too imo. And what's stopping the sellers from identifying the safest next customer and why'd they go through someone sent by Marlo, cause of a 16 mil drug bust on their end. The coop were short of cash to pay him too. I just can't accept the punk got that kind of cash for a connect that would have eventually found its way

[Veltigar]

I decided to rewatch The Prince of Egypt yesterday and was blown away by it. What a great film and definitely the best adaptation of Exodus that I have seen (or heard about, still not planning on watching Ridley's version). I can only applaud the creators for having the guts to tackle a biblical story and foreground the human conflict lurking within it. 

The relationship between Moses and Ramesses is one of the greatest sibling dynamics ever brought to the screen. Every exchange between them is perfect, and I was struck how the years have evolved my understanding of both characters and their struggles. In particular, I never before understood what a tragic figure Rameses really is in this film. He's a villain, but also a victim, and his twisted desire to live up to his father's ideal of him ultimately costs him everything. 

The voice cast is also incredibly stacked with talent. I think this film (and DreamWorks animation in general) started the trend of casting A-list actors in all parts of these animated films (instead of, like before, one or two big names to draw in a crowd). I'm not necessarily a big fan of this trend, but for The Prince of Egypt it definitely works. There are quite a few voices I didn't recognize (despite knowing the actor playing them) and there was no character where the celebrity voice really took me out of the experience.

The animation is of course astounding. The way that they are able to showcase emotions on the character's faces or how they translate God's wonders to the screen. The splitting of the sea sequence for instance is epic. It just shows you that for some stories, animation really is the most appropriate way to translate it to the screen. Couple that to one of the most underrated soundtracks ever and you get magic.

In particular, I liked the opening song (Deliver Us) and the montage song showing the Plagues. That montage was a combination of so many things that I love about this film. A heady subject matter, tasteful animation, great music and a bold storytelling choice to basically montage through almost all of the Plagues. Lesser films would have milked that sequence to give us an hour of misery porn, but The Prince of Egypt knows where it heart lies and decides to get it over with quickly.

The cherry on top is the incredible attention to detail shown by the creators. I have been watching quite a few video essays on the subject and there are so many little details cleverly sprinkled throughout the runtime of this film

Spoiler

For example, Ramesses' hide-out where he goes to seek comfort is literally in the lap of his father. Or the musical cues foreshadowing songs to come or providing a call back. All of it is really cleverly done. 

 

19 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I’ve been to a couple of test screening that were pre FX work, and it’s very easy to tell whether something is good or bad from that stage.

Having said that, I don’t think those movies i saw were salvagable, and I have real hard time thinking that making a movie is like creating an app.
 

You can’t just put out a BETA version and iterate till you get it right. Mostly you need to make something great a long time before audiences see it. It’s pretty Waterfall. 

Ah, I think you misunderstood me. I think you can definitely beta test the story of a film cheaply before ever having to shoot a minute of film. The test screenings you attended were already "completely" shot but just needed the VFX work done.

I think for a studio willing to blow an average of 172 million USD, there are more than enough resources to take the first draft of the screenplay, hire some voice actors and slightly rework the artwork used in the story boarding to stitch together a sort of show that you could expose to a test audience for feedback at that stage.

Rinse and repeat that a few times and I think you'll have a much more solid and cohesive concept on which to base your planning, which I'm assuming would lead to lower costs and more revenue potential (since the film will probably of a higher quality) and thus ultimately to much larger profits.

Edited December 29, 2023 by Veltigar