When I first saw Sans soleil I watched the French version without subtitles and was basically half asleep for the whole movie, so I didn’t catch or remember the part about Pac-Man:
Video games are the first stage in a plan for machines to help the human race, the only plan that offers a future for intelligence. For the moment, the inseparable philosophy of our time is contained in the Pac-Man. I didn’t know when I was sacrificing all my hundred-yen coins to him that he was going to conquer the world, perhaps because he is the most perfect graphic metaphor of man’s fate. He puts into true perspective the balance of power between the individual and the environment, and he tells us soberly that though there may be honor in carrying out the greatest number of victorious attacks, it always comes a cropper.
Giovanni Broccoli and his brother emigrated to Long Island from Calabria at the turn of the century… the brothers were descended from the Broccolis of Carrera, who first crossed two Italian vegetables, cauliflower and rabe, to produce the dark green, thick-stalked vegetable that took their name and eventually supported them in the United States.
I’d watch a Scaramanga miniseries. But I suspect they’re more liable to just remake Dr. No as a miniseries and then try to spin off their own original characters they put in the miniseries, like Geoffrey Belzeus.
This news got me to look at the Letterboxd scores for the last few Bonds, since I checked out after Skyfall. I’m legitimately shocked that they’re still so widely enjoyed? I genuinely thought the franchise had been creatively dead since Casino Royale.
I liked it! It’s very funny. I was really guffawing at a few parts
It’s maybe a little too simple - the satire is basically just that she’s a mom… that kills! The movie wraps up in 90 minutes which is either a blessing (doesn’t wear out its welcome) or a curse (doesn’t spend much time on the other satirical avenues, like the hubbub around her trial in the latter half)
A couple of the deaths were surprisingly gory, which was a turn-off for me. I read an interview with Kathleen Turner and she actually cited those same deaths as feeling too gory and made her almost not take the role
I watched this a few months ago for a podcast I host with 2 other folks and we all throughly enjoyed it. Lots of memorable bits. Don’t let serial mom catch you chewing gum.
The short answer: a lot of people have bad taste
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I don’t know why so many filmmakers like this…
I appreciate that this video covers the lost knowledge element at work and how the capabilities of technology influence aesthetic priorities, but this really has little to do with tech, taste, or talent and everything to do with money. This video and others in the same discussion (not bullying this guy in particular) assume it’s a mistake on the part of filmmakers or studios, that the studios themselves don’t understand why their movies look like this, when of course they do. It’s all in the service of the money men who have learned they don’t have to make halfway decent movies in order to turn a profit. That good taste and talent are disappearing isn’t a mystery, it’s a direct result of studios not hiring producers / directors / visionaries with good taste, strong judgments, and the freedom to exercise both because it’s not necessary for their bottom line. Obviously a silly shortsighted ethos but it’s where the big companies are at. I don’t know how film schools deal with these changes to the field.
In particular, Deadpool & Wolverine or Wicked wouldn’t be much better if they were shot in the '90s by Dean Cundey. Commercial films didn’t use to just look better, they were built on better bones (plenty of trash back then too, yes). The Parent Trap (1998) may be a remake of a previous Disney comedy from the '60s but it’s still fundamentally about actors embodying people talking to each other. It feels more “real” than D&W and Wicked because the latter are franchise films banking on the audience recognizing stuff they already understand like the previous Deadpool and Wolverine films and Wicked the stage musical based on Wicked the book based on The Wizard of Oz the movie (based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the book obviously, but the book isn’t a cultural institution like the film).
Maybe something like The Killer actually stands a chance at being improved by the ancien regime of cinematography but I don’t see why we have to worry about how bad modern franchise films look, there are more fundamental issues at play which won’t go away even if the movies go back to being pretty. “What’s wrong with the Internet and how can we make it better?” The image-based culture of online discourse focuses too much on the superficialities of modern entertainment and needs to understand that redirecting the smoke of contemporary bluescreen soundstages and postproduction-focused cinematography isn’t the same as putting out the fire of mergers and acquisitions
Yeah, I also got that video in my feed and didn’t find it too convincing. Run of the mill hollywood movies might look worse, but ads have never looked so good, same with social media posts, music videos and youtube video essays. Filmmakers didn’t forget how to do it, it’s just that doing it became less important to a film’s success or failure, so it went down on the list of priorities in a specific type of film (easy-watch comedies). I would even disagree with the premise, there are tons of Netflix shows that look like a million bucks but the script is trash and the story is 90% misdirection and filler because the show is just feed for the content farm.
David Fincher in the last 15 years has directed Gone Girl, Mank, Mindhunter and the film every yt film essayist loves to ++++ over, The Social Network. They all have very strong intentional looks, so the explanation for why The Killer looks like that is simply that is how he wanted it to look.
