f13.net

Bah! Kill Bill was awesome.

It was pretty much shit.

Anyway, I can't believe we're talking about fucking Tarantino again.

Also, is your avatar Flint?

I, of course, completely disagree.


It's one of the Dwarf avatars from BG.

Kill Bill has its moments.  As a whole it bores me, but I'll queue up some of the fight scenes to watch them from time to time.

Tarantino has never been about "original" writing.

Most of his films have had brief moments of  :heart:.  Unfortunately, they are surrounded by long periods of monotony.  Still, I almost always rent his films when they come out but sometimes I don't make it to the end.

Death Proof rocked on the action scale. Then again, I'm a sucker for car crashes and clanking metal.

The writing? Not so much -- but he has his moments.

I thought his writing on True Romance was great, although obviously it is one long homage. mainly to Badlands.  And the writing on Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction was brilliant in places, and pretty good throughout.

It's his acting that is appalling.  Destiny Turns on the Radio  :uhrr:.  Four Rooms (his writing on his section too, I admit).  Dusk Til Dawn.  Pulp Fiction.  Ack.  I admit that his little speech at the beginning of Reservoir Dogs is good, but he's not really acting there.

Thing is, Roger Avary helped him write True Romance/Pulp Fiction (Reservoir was it's own work, I believe). In fact, parts of them supposedly were all part of one long script they were working on (along with the story for Natural Born Killers). The really good dialogue, otoh, shit like Quentin's Madonna speech that you're talking about -- that was all Avary. The Butch episode in Pulp (the best episode) was all Avary. Anything that makes reference to France (Royale with Cheese) is Avary.

But Tarantino is a entertaining director. I don't care if it's overtly derivative or not -- most stuff is. And he just happens to derive from things I like to keep seeing.

I like his movies, but they are pretty much all made up of homages to other movies.  Take a look at this article on Kill Bill for instance (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/11/movies/11KEHR.html?ex=1397016000&en=9cb0f22bc4e5a240&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND).

The only good thing Tarantino did was the 20 minutes or so he wrote in Four Rooms. Everything else is shlocky ripoff crap. Also, calling all of his work a series of homages really discredits the word homage. You can get away with one in a lifetime. Maybe two. But all of them? That makes you an unoriginal yutz who deserves the cruelest of fates.

My problem with Kill Bill wasn't that it was largely homage, I'm fine with that. I just didn't think it was very good overall. No emotional or character depth (across two whole movies) and the action, while cool, was nothing that knocked my socks off.

And given that there was no depth of story and no characterization it was way too long.

... and even that was the third best of the four stories (The whole witch thing being the worst).  God, I loved Four Rooms. 

Speaking of "homages"...

The other day Righ was watching something on one of the music channels and I asked what it was and he said, "it's a homage to The Who."  So I sat down to watch and it seemed to be The Who doing the homaging.  Uh, I don't know who was playing before that but the last half hour or what ever it was that I watched was all The Who doing The Who.  What the hell kind of Who homage is that?!?

I guess since both Entwistle and Moon are gone, it can't be called the Who anymore. Hence, it's just Townsend and Daltrey paying tribute.

Hell, it could barely be called the Who even with just Moon gone for the past 20+ years.

They've been blitzing Who stuff lately, which is pretty cool. I love Classic Albums, where they have artists or engineers sit at the mixer with the master and pull faders up or down to highlight what they're talking about. Hearing the Ox thunder through a line is amazing, isolating Moonie is face-melting.

Saw one thing where Pearl Jam did a respectable job (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZW4x3O3HBI) of a couple songs, but it really highlights how bands like the Who and Zep were so strong at every position. Jeff Ament played it very boring and uncreatively (imo, I've said elsewhere I'm hard on bassists). I mean, he hit the high parts pretty much the way they were recorded, but Entwistle kicked out the mufu'in JAMS on that song when he played it and there are some spots where Ox would've been jamming that Ament just sits on the root, boo. Veddie did a good job on Love Reign O'er Me, since it's a damned hard song to sing...but I'm spoiled by watching Ann Wilson do the definitive version live last year from the fifth row. The whole audience was in shock, it was so perfect.

Yes, Eddie is a big Who fan, and KILLS Love Reign. I think it's better than the original honestly. The first time I heard the recorded version, I cried. Never heard Ann sing it -- gotta check it out now!

I think the way to look at Kill Bill is as a series of music videos strung together, not as an actual film.

And personally I think a remake of Attack of the 50ft Woman is something that should be considered for Britney. Really.

Writing wise, yes, Quentin sucks. I even think some of the small bits of brilliance in his recent movies were probably leftovers from something Avary said (my theory at least). Y'know, like the Superman reference in Kill Bill. They just stick out like a sore thumb.

But he's a good director. And there are few, if any, directors that aren't paying homage to the past, photographically/cinematographically speaking. All of the big pioneers were in the silent era and a little beyond. Whether it's a subtle pan, or the use of the steady cam, someone's paying homage. And Tarantino takes a lot of good elements from the past. He's the film geek du jour. A sucky director is probably one who ISN'T paying homage to something at this point -- y'know, a completely random/thoughtless director.

He also has an excellent taste in garage bin music -- along with a feel for tapping into the potential of washed up/forgotten/unknown actors. Especially Robert Forster, Sonny Chiba, and Michael Parks. Sam Jackson wasn't an obvious before bet before Pulp, and even Bruce Willis wasn't doing shit -- but that film made Sam infinitely cool, and reminded everyone how cool Bruce was. The only person I wished Quentin didn't unleash on us is Travolta (even if he was good as Vincent).

I don't know if you're extending "just beyond" the silent period a long way, but Welles just straight-up invented whole shots.  And even later, you had a revolution in styles after Garrett Brown invented the Steadicam.  With reference to that, you then get the whole shakycam style.  There has also been a lot of inventive work done in television drama in the last fifteen years or so, particularly with single camera setups.

I can't remember the first director to use dolly zooms, but it was around the time of Hitchcock, who really popularised it in Vertigo.  In fact, Hitchcock pretty much invented (or nicked from cameramen!) several techniques.

No, Welles is there, as is Hitchcock. Not just the silent era (sorry for sounding like I meant only that). People who really didn't have much to draw upon, and explored the possibilities of a (then) new artform -- most of the shit that's everywhere now, but we all take for granted. Granted, there's later things like the steadicam. Shaky cam -- not so much. It's got one application really. Shakyness. Almost always relegated to fight or intense action scenes. I mean, that's innovative, but not exactly revolutionary. Hell, Gonzo Porn might be more revolutionary.  :pedobear:

Revolutionary to me would be some perspective/means/tools/effects that can be applied in many ways. An "eye" that can be used for many different types of scenes (if that makes sense?).

[edit] Anyhow, as far as Tarantino goes, what I meant was, like Scorsese, he knows who are the model examples of scene types and techniques, has a good sense on how to get maximum effect, and steals these things. Shamelessly. Not a big deal to me though. I wish more people did this.

Sure. But by original story in Kill Bill's case, I do mean an actual story. Kill Bill wasn't a story, it was shitty, over the top Monty-Python-esque fight scenes barely worthy of a MadTV skit. The dialogue was forced and unimaginative, the direction was pedestrian and making it two movies was a ripoff and a crime.

This is a pretty interesting discussion.

One of my favorite directors is John Carpenter, and it's generally recognized that a lot of his work is patterned off of Howard Hawks. For example Assault on Precient 13 being a "remake" of Rio Bravo. Even the way he titles his films "John Carpenter's X" is based on Hawks. But it never feels like he is aping Hawks. Watching Hawks' films doesn't cheapen the experience, if anything it makes it more enjoyable because while some of the themes may be similar they stand up on their own.

I feel that with some of Tarantino's stuff the more familiar you are with the source material the less impressive the work becomes. Like the Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films, the more you know about the originals the less you care about the Americanized versions. For example the stuff from Kill Bill 2 where Uma is training with the old guy. It didn't have a unique spin or anything to differentiate it from a hundred similar Asian movies.

I don't mind when directors pay homage or even lift entire sequences wholesale, especially if it's out of love for the original. But Kill Bill was a simple amalgamation of previous movies without much to differentiate it.

I like Tarantino to some degree but following Kill Bill with Death Proof is a little too backward-looking for my taste.

I'm not sure I understand this statement. Can you clarify?

I'd agree about Kill Bill. It was a lot of aping. Some of it was cool though.

Anyhow, to me, Death Proof actually stands out as subtle in it's "aping". Which is ironic. I mean, the premise of Grindhouse was supposed to be an overt homage to 70's schlock cinema, but he offered something where he wasn't "chatting up" his influences too much, nor paying homage to that genre completely. It's fairly dry on that level. He's borrowing certain archetypes and some stuntwork (otoh, having Zoe Bell function as both a cast member and a stunt member brought some brand new stunt shots never seen before..just by virtue of him being able to do closeups on her), but for the most part, he's just applying his general knowledge about action movies, isn't trying to be too cute with it, and it turned out to be simple fun in the end (imo).

Writing wise, it wasn't anything special, except for the ending. I like the idea of a monster getting completely castrated and the shit kicked out of him by girls. Everyone wants to see that -- yet... It rarely happens. Monsters usually put up a good fight.

The whole idea of Grindhouse was to pay homage to grindhouse theater, and a large portion of Death Proof was focused on knob-polishing Vanishing Point. I don't think Death Proof is guilty of too directly copying older films but the whole concept is purposely derivative. If you count Kill Bill as two different films that's three movies in a row that are rooted firmly in the past and conceived largely as homage to earlier film genres.

I did think the ending of Death Proof was great. The last 2 minutes of it were the best 2 minutes of Grindhouse hand's down.

Shakycam is not a fucking style. It's a lazy anti-style. It's used to cover shitty fight choreography and is lazy directing by people who want to be artsy. It has singlehandedly made some action movies unwatchable shit (like the last 2 Bourne movies, I'll watch Uwe Bowell before I give that hack Greengrass any of my money.)

Can you tell my vitriol for shakycam approaches Schild levels of Tarantino hate?

OK, so you don't like it.  But when Kubrick used it in Dr Strangelove (and it is a huge contrast from what Kubrick normally does) it was innovative, ground-breaking and exciting.  Yes, lots of people then copied it, did it to excess or (post-Brown) made it ubiquitous.  But a good director can still use it well.  And some of the most effective use has been done on television, often coupled with the long take technique, often by Zoic.  It just needs to be sparingly, and done with a light touch.

Edit: verbs are not adverbs.

I'll concede this much. Used sparingly I can tolerate it.

Like in Pitch Black.

Don't forget that Tarantino helped spawn Natural Born Killers, which turned out to be one of Oliver Stone's better flicks.

Part of the problem Tarantino has is that he fails to translate things he believes are cool into things the audience sees as cool. A big issue he had with Death Proof was that viewers felt he was being campy when he was actually attempting to be serious & hip.

Here's a snippet from an interview he did which granted me a lot of insight into how off base he can be sometimes:

full interview here:  http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49432 (http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49432) Worth the read.

This motherfucker has never written an original thing in his life. Why would anyone ever listen to him? Yea, it's worth reading if you want more reasons to Kamnap him, drop him in China and get him addicted to heroin and have him work out his life in a shoe-sole factory.

Actually.. That touches on the point that I mentioned above -- that I thought that Death Proof, while homage, was dry in a way. It really was kind of a serious movie. That's what I found ironic about it. I see what Quentin is saying.

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, that's probably his most realistic flick (not to say it was Kramer vs Kramer or anything...just that it was more plausible and less self-aware than anything else he's done).

Also, there are probably more guys out there who resemble Stuntman Mike than Jules, Mr. Blonde, or Ordell. Yeah, it's wrapped in a whole Vanishing Point myth thing, but the basic story is a realistic one: Crazy psychopath who kills pretty girls with his car. Fair enough. He gets scared when they fight back. Fair too. There are probably many would be serial killers like that. It's even more realistic than Jackie Brown -- which, while grounded in some believable situations, is cartoony just because of Ordell alone.

The girls of Death Proof as well -- they're all fairly realistic characters (I mean, the craziest one of the bunch is Zoe... and she's just playing an exaggerated version of herself). The only one that comes across as hokey and a typical "Tarantino" type of character is Jungle Julia. His characters have that thing about them...y'know...like how every word they utter, they've got that jive where they're performing everything to the audience and shit (instead of in spite of the audience)? She's the only one like that.

I can't stand Jungle Julia characters. When I went to see Death Proof, we left the theater because Jungle Julia wouldn't stop talking like an idiot. I get the feeling that Tarantino can be pretentious sometimes and it just bleeds out in his dialogue. Why would I pay to be talked down to? I like Tarantino, but some of the stuff he does makes me scatch my head. If it wasn't for Robert Rodriguez, he'd be harder pressed to find work.

I think Robert R is the same actually. Not a great writer, but a great director.

That said, if I had a million dollars, I'd find his house in Austin, and he'd be the first person I gave it to.

Pulp Fiction.

Throw enough shit at the wall and something's gotta stick. I think that's Samuel L. Jackson's credo also. Truly, a match made in heaven.

Grindhouse was Tarantino and Rodriguez making movies for each other that only they wanted to see, while the public stood there mystified.  The whole marketing pitch basically consisted of "Hey public, remember grindhouses?  Weren't they gre...  No?  Well a grindhouse was a movie theater which showed low-budget exploi...  No, it looks shitty, but that's irony!  Wait, let me finish explaining!"  Unsurprisingly it was a gigantic money-losing flop.

Kill Bill was just Tarantino crawling up his own asshole doing whatever silly thing he wanted because no one would say no to him.  Absurdly long fight scenes that eventually became so monotonous that it was like watching someone else play a videogame, random bits in cartoon, blood geysers that would make Sam Raimi go "Come on, that's unrealistic!" and so forth.  Unfortunately both "volumes" turned a healthy profit, which was just about the worst thing that could ever happen in terms of his chances of ever making anything watchable ever again.

David Lynch to Produce Werner Herzog film. (http://www.technoccult.com/archives/2008/08/13/david-lynch-making-new-films-with-herzog-jodorowsky/)


I got all excited reading that, but I'm an artiste. 

I went out to see Herzog's Rescue Dawn last year (awesome, awesome title btw). Not the best Prisoner of War flick I've ever seen, but it was cool- especially the opening shot.

I watched Rescue Dawn first and then Little Dieter Needs to Fly (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145046/) to hear the story from Dengler himself.  Herzog directed the documentary before he made the film with Bale, and shortly before Dengler died.  Seeing what that experience did to the man in his later life is amazing.  Rescue Dawn may not be the best POW film, but it is the truest and also the only escape from a VC prison camp, to my knowledge.  Highly recommended, both.

Oh God how can you be any less self-aware. Tarantino writes every damn character to be himself!

I enjoyed the Grindhouse experience but when I watched Planet Terror seperately it didn't hold up at all. Instead of a fun B-movie it's an A movie trying to ape a B-movie. (By comparison I watched Machine Girl the week before, similar film, much better)

Given that I enjoyed Planet Terror more in the theater I have zero desire to ever watch Death Proof again.

I've seen Planet Terror, not Death Proof (they separated the two out for release over here, or at least the place I went to didn't show them together). It was seriously ass and just made me think someone was trying to do Evil Dead 3 while screaming at the whole audience, "Lol see, it's so bad that it's a fucking awesome experience!!!1!!" I enjoy 'so bad they're good movies' and I seriously thought a movie where a chick gets a rifle for a false leg couldn't be too bad but, fuck. One of the few movies I really just wanted to walk out of because I didn't even find it very entertaining. However I'm also one of these people who feels the need to see something all the way through in the vague hope it gets better. I hope to grow out of this soon enough.

I walked out of The Avengers about 25 minutes in, having thought "I've already paid cash for the next 90 minutes, no need to also be miserable".  It was curiously liberating, and the friends I was with were (in the main) very jealous afterwards.  Since then, I've been in a walking-out frenzy.  It's best at the theatre, where you meet interesting people of a like mind in the bar.

The Avengers TV show is great. Phenomenal and Emma Peele in a black catsuit...yikes.


Yeah. I wasn't a huge fan of Evil Dead 3 either now that you mention it. (Evil Dead 2 however...)

Planet Terror was just played wrong. It wasn't bad by accident, and earnest attempt to make a good movie that went horribly wrong. Nor was it played so silly that it was enjoyable camp. Sure it was bad and silly but a movie about a chick with a grenade launcher on her leg could have been a lot sillier. Some of it like the testicle-collecting was just dumb.

The best part were the score bits they took from Escape from New York. In a lot of ways Robert Rodriguez is like John Carpenter, he directs, writes, scores and cuts his movies, he has a lot of say in the final product, he looks for alternate financing and tries to avoid studio meddling. A lot of his sensibilities are pretty similar as well. (I believe Rodriquez is a fan of Carpenter, I know they've been paired together at an SXSW event) But he is lacking something -- too self-aware, too much style over substance, too little heart and authenticity.

The only RR movie I really like is From Dusk Till Dawn, but even that has major issues that I simply choose to ignore. Probably the main thing I like about it is how ballsy it is to totally change into a different film halfway through and how crazy and stupid it becomes.

That's because the first half is directed by Tarantino... the second half (when the vamps come out) is directed by Rodriguez.

I watched John Carpenter's Vampires last night and I've got to say that I really saw Carpenter's influence from Planet Terror. At the same time it was like he saw Carpenter and just thought what made it good was non CG specials effects and cliched plots, therefore the key was to put both those elements up to 11 and sit back to watch teh awsum unfold. I seriously think that is how that movie gets explained, it's like watching Terminator 2 and deciding that the way to make a great film is sunglasses and catchphrases to the Max!

The book, Vampire$, by John Steakly is worth reading, if you liked the movie. All props to John Carpenter for even trying to adapt the book, but the book has so much more win in it its not even funny. Also worth checking out is Steakly's book 'Armor'

I must agree here.  The experience as a whole was fun.  Each movie separately was... okay.  Not great, but just okay.  I enjoyed the concept but it probably would have worked better with a lower budget for both movies rather than as much as they spent.  Death Proof did a good job of appearing to be a B movie, but it still had a bit too much to it to truly be as bad as they were going for while Planet Terror was very slick despite intentionally missing chunks.

Armor is really a "Must Read" for sci-fi fans.  Your impression from reading the blurbs will be that it's a Starship Troopers knockoff, complete with hordes of bugs.  But where Starship Troopers was a retelling of a very old plot (feckless youth becomes warrior), Armor is completely different, about how war as the pilot of a machine dehumanizes you even when the enemy is completely unhuman (I was referred to it by a crewman on a AC130 gunship).  I am a big Heinlein fan, but Armor is a much better story than Starship Troopers.

--Dave

This was evident to me when I saw the clip of Carpenter and RR together at a SXSW event. RR was talking about how shooting digitally is so easy and Carpenter was saying that digital shooting doesn't have the same color depth, therefore he wasn't interested. For RR it was all about ease and convenience and being good enough, but for Carpenter it was about delivering the best possible experience to the audience.

A lot of Carpenter movies you watch when you are young and they are flat out entertaining, but then you watch them when you're older and they have some real depth to them. For example Big Trouble is a great movie to just watch as a kid, I remember watching it every time it was on and thinking how cool it was when Russel's character killed Lo Pan.

But now that I'm older I can also recognize how the movie breaks so many boundries. Russel is not really the hero, he runs around wearing lipstick, in the end he doesn't get with the girl or even kiss her -- it's a bold script and a bold performance to play second fiddle to the small Asian dude. As an adult I can still appreciate the obvious fun but also how unique the vision is.

I don't see RR movies as anything other than cool dumb fun.

While I like most of RR's movies, his greatest accomplishment as a director is in the process, not the end result. He doesn't really make art as it were, but his technical process is an art in itself. Making a movie like Spy Kids on the budgets he manages is a skill most Hollywood directors couldn't manage. He's still got chops now... go back to the bus scene in the original El Mariachi (realizing that was done in one take and with mostly amateur stuntmen and performers) and you'll see the motherfucker knows how to direct. But I don't think you'll ever look at Once Upon a Time in Mexico and put it up next to any of the great directors of our time.

What he needs is a really great writer, like Scorsese has had. I mean, he had that in Frank Miller, but I mean a traditional writer for film. I don't know why he doesn't do this. It's not like he's the auteur type anyways.

[edit] Uh, I only mention Scorsese because he was good on a shoestring budget back in his day too.

Its sorta apples and organges, tho. Although RR and Carpenter sometimes share the same theme, the artistic perspective is radically different. Carpenter is very very visually oriented. He tells half the story by the way the screen pans across the landscape/set in the first 30 seconds. RR does that too, but his genius to me seems to be to capture people's personalities and motives nearly instantly. Carpenter has his share of that, but that's RR's forte. Both are underappreciated amidst the Snow Falling on my Gilded Cedar Bollocks type films.

And one sentence you've damned a whole gamut of filmmakers who arguably are better filmmakers than Carpenter, just because they chose to shoot on digital including Steven Soderbergh, Tony Scott, Mel Gibson, Bryan Singer, Sidney Lumet and Doug Liman.

Well done.

Well sorry but it's true. Digital is much more convenient but at this point doesn't look as good.

Jesus, that's so scattershot, it's crazy.

You forgot to mention Lucas.

They're people "who are arguably better filmmakers than Carpenter".


I don't follow.

Green text.

Bah!

It's early. I'm only on my second coffee.

Tell me you didn't just group the guy who directed The Limey with the guy who directed Apocalypto. That's like sticking together Hitchcock and M. Night Shamalamadingdong to make a point about director cameos.  :ye_gods:

EDIT: Also, as the point Margalis was making, I don't think it was so much the digital as it was the intent behind using it, and that it backed up RR delivering a certain depth of end product...At least that's my take.

As a counterexample, I wouldn't ding Soderbergh for Traffic, since you could argue that he knew he was going to grade the fuck out of the movie to put a subtle separation between the four storylines. It's not about the what, more the why.

EDIT: Okay, learned to read. I guess he WAS saying digital sucks.  :oh_i_see:

Actually, Shylamadingdong is a cool actor IMO. He was in that Lady in the Water flick at least (or whatever it's called).

Man, that was the one that put me off my feed. His cameo in Sixth Sense was kind of charming, since I didn't know who he was, and after finding out I was rewatching it and spotted him and it was kind of neat. The one in Signs was where it started to get over the top, for me. But, I don't disagree he's an okay actor, so it was watchable. Though a little :roll: that he just stopped by to deliver a major plot point. That's okay, that fit the general thrust of the movie.

Lady in the water?

"So, M, who are you playing in this one?"

"I shall play...Jesus. For the entire film."

 :uhrr:

I just liked his cocky attitude in it.

Granted, he's no bearded psycho Scoresese in Taxi Driver though.  :awesome_for_real:

God, I forgot all about that one!

He was also pretty fucking awful in that movie, which was awful in its own right. He's not a good actor. The fact that the story made the director's character so important just made the shitty movie even worse.

What people aren't sick of his one-trick pony movies yet?

The only movie of his that is watchable for me is Unbreakable.

Pretty fucking awful eh? A bit dramatic, I say.  :oh_i_see: Is there nothing that you guys don't just simply "dislike"? Or simply "like", for that matter? Tastes here tend to be very bi-polar.  :wink:

Look, there are a number of movies that I think are ok. But /meh feelings don't generally warrant a response, you just watch the movie and set it aside. Elizabeth: The Golden Age was a meh film. I liked it well enough, but it paled in comparison to the first one. Not terrible, but not great.

Lady in the Water, though? That movie was fucking awful. I felt sorry for Paul Giamatti. It was like a Choose Your Own Adventure book married with young adult fiction and had a fan fiction self-aggrandizement baby. It was just fucking terrible, and the director stroking himself by being the writer of the humanity saving book was just directorial bukkake. It made me finally realize that Shamalamadingdong truly needs to just stop making movies.

Yes, you read right.  I did lump in Soderbergh with Gibson. Why? Because they are directors who care very much about the visuals.  Soderbergh is a total digital convert these days. Whether or not you liked Apocalypto as a film, the cinematography is unquestionably stunning. Shot on digital.  Superman Returns had rubbish story and appalling acting but visually was pretty impressive. Shot on digital.  

Do you think 95% of the cinema going audience are going to tell the difference between a movie that was shot on 35mm and one shot on digital? Do you think they could tell the which parts of Jumper were filmed on a standard Panavision film camera and which scenes were shot on a Red One?  I'm not going to say that digital is as good as film because that would be patently false and easily disproved.  There's still a little way to go yet. The next generation of Red cameras are getting there and are meant to be able to shoot in resolutions that are comparable with standard 35mm but will still suffer in some other areas - particularly high speed shooting.

What I find absurd about this is that the discussion came about because it's John Carpenter who's being held up as the paradigm of director's desire to "deliver the best possible experience to the audience". Really? How does that explain Village of the Damned or Ghosts From Mars or Escape from L.A.? Won't shoot on digital but is happy to have second rate makeup effects on Vampires? I like most of his films up to In the Mouth of Madness (and yeah, Vampires was watchable) but you can't convince me that any of his films would suffer from being shot on a Panavision Genesis. He's not exactly Bertolucci or David Lean is he?

Carpenter's like.... De Palma... Hasn't made anything really good in YEARS. Years upon years upon years. So I agree... Definitely not a guy who gives "what the audience wants".

Except De Palma was an even bigger genius once (and fuck no, I'm not talking Scarface. I'm talking radical 70's Hi Mom De Palma).

[edit] Wait, Carlito's Way was cool. At least Charlie's dialogue/narrating was. And the Grand Central scene.

Yeah, Carlito's Way was a good film

Lumet suffers too.  The man who directed 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Network then went on to do The Wiz (aka The WTF?), Family Business and Gloria. I gather "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" isn't bad but haven't seen it.

Woah, woah, woah, back the truck up, there. I never said that I agreed that digital wasn't a viable option. I think you want to argue that point with Margalis. Second, I think you're missing the point; The point is that RR is a lazier director than John Carpenter, and his choice of digital reflects that. Not that using digital is inherently lazier, but that his reason was that it's cheap and easy...Which sounds like a valid point to me. Whether Carpenter is smoking crack about whether digital can 'deliver' is beside the point, it's the attitude. 

And as far as calling Mel Gibson the equal of Soderbergh because the visuals in his movie are stunning, okay, fine, Apocalypto proves that you can good visuals in digital. Mel Gibson still doesn't belong in that list. I was never arguing the digital looks worse than filmstock argument in the first place.

 :why_so_serious:

I was actually arguing that point with Margalis. I was just standing on you to do it.

Also, that list was not necessarily a list of equals. It's a list of directors who have all in their own way made films which have been described as visually impressive.  Except perhaps for Doug Liman who I respect because he brings guerilla filmmaking techniques to blockbuster films.

Sidney Lumet said that he loves digital because it sidesteps all the hassle of using film stock and yeah, at the end of the day, digital is more convenient, quicker and easier and, most importantly, cheaper. The Red One camera is going to be a godsend to independent and low budget filmmakers - especially when the next-gen version comes out and the current 3k/4k version drops in price (rental as well as retail).

Then again, Danny Boyle shot 28 Days Later with a Canon XL1 and those are dirt cheap these days.  Not really good enough for 35mm transfer but still.

Hah! fair enough. :)

I was merely contrasting RR with Carpenter.

RR argued that digital is "good enough" and is convenient. Carpenter argued that it isn't good enough and convenience doesn't matter. (Remember Carpenter is used to cutting and splicing film by hand physically)

I wasn't implying that everyone who uses digital is a bad director or that digital sucks, I just found that particular incident illustrative. Especially since RR is often considered a director in the vein of Carpenter, cites him as an influence and they were purposely paired together at this event. But their conversation showed that they had little in common. The more I see of both of them the more I see that they are nothing alike.