Month: March 2013

‘Dark Horse’ & ‘Damsels in Distress’: A Tale of Two Departures

toysrus

One of the best shots in recent history. This, right here, is how you say ‘fuck you’.

Dark Horse (2011)
Written and Directed by Todd Solondz
86 min.

Spoiler-free.

I should’ve seen this one in theaters. But I didn’t. I listened to people. I should never listen to people. People are shit. By ‘people’ I mean those-who-tell-you-a-movie-sucks-and-that-it-is-an-unwelcome-departure-from-said-filmmaker. Those people. Fuck those people.

Why is it that they never caution you about the right movies? I would’ve killed for someone to tap me on the shoulder before I saw Damsels in Distress and warn me that Whit Stillman—a once perfect filmmaker of remarkable integrity—has decided to cop out and pander to a generation he doesn’t understand, and isn’t even worth understanding. But no. They had to warn me about this one instead.
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We Now Offer Free Movie Advice!

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Typical Smug Film reader at a movie store.

If cinema has taught us anything, it’s not to trust robots. So why get movie recommendations from robots? Robots don’t know anything about movies. If they did, they’d make ’em themselves or whatever. So fuck all that algorithmic nonsense on Netflix and Amazon and IMDb and countless other sites. Nothing beats good ol’ fashioned advice from a knowledgable film buff who enjoys stuff from all genres. But gone are the days when you could walk into a video store and get that sort of service. Which is why we have started a free movie advice column.

Every Monday (Beginning March 18th) Cody Clarke and John D’Amico will answer a new batch of your requests. Simply fill out the form below, and you can kiss your ‘what to watch’ woes away! (Form will not appear in RSS.)

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Life of Pi: An Allegory, or rather, a ‘Tell-egory’

lifeofpi2
(Still taken from the wonderful site BeforeVFX.Tumblr.com)

Life of Pi (2012)
Directed by Ang Lee
Screenplay by David Magee
127 min.

Disclaimer: No, I haven’t read the book, and I understand full well that there are probably differences between the book and the movie, and that I would possibly ‘understand’ more about the story the movie tries to tell if I’d read the book.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

I could not talk about the Oscar winner for Visual Effects without first bitching about its visual effects, but I’ll try to keep it short, as my thoughts on VFX have already been made clear enough. Basically, the CG in Life of Pi is certainly impressive, no doubt. More than once, I went back and paused on frames to gawk at the insane level of detail they crammed into the animals, which are animated with eye-popping fluidity. They may be too fluid, however, because I found myself slipping in the uncanny valley here and there—the most jarring moments being when footage of an actual tiger is juxtaposed with a CG tiger in quick succession. By and large though, the omnipresence of CG animals isn’t too bothersome. It’s integrated into the physical set well enough that it usually feels like it’s really there.
Continue reading Life of Pi: An Allegory, or rather, a ‘Tell-egory’