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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  General Discussion  |  Movies  |  Topic: Cloud Atlas (2012) 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Cloud Atlas (2012)  (Read 21588 times)
lamaros
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Reply #70 on: July 11, 2013, 07:39:53 PM

You seem crazy. That fourth sentence just goes and goes...

Also forcing someone to watch this might lead to your death. It's not as bad as the Matrix sequels, but...
« Last Edit: July 11, 2013, 07:42:03 PM by lamaros »
pxib
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Reply #71 on: July 12, 2013, 12:09:06 PM

Yeah, I was so 'meh' coming out of the theatre from this half a year ago that I didn't even think it was worth the post.

There are some amazing visuals in here, great craft and composition, but they are a tiny fraction of what we have to sit and watch. Turning it into a massive cameofest with different actors in every storyline would have lost nothing. Let people play what they look right playing, don't try to make them look like someone they can't play. It's just distracting. Most of these people are are stars, not actors.

The egotistical editor trying to escape from the retirement home was cute and survived more or less intact, also the tragedy of the composer. Everything else felt forced at best. Read the book.

if at last you do succeed, never try again
HaemishM
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Reply #72 on: February 18, 2015, 02:50:38 PM

NECRO!

I haven't read the book so my comments relate solely to the movie.

This thing could have been great, but it was so deeply flawed at the conceptual stage. Having the same actors playing multiple roles was such a bad bad idea from the start. It might have been ok if the characters had been the same race/sex but forcing the characters to play multiple races that they so clearly were not and then layering really shitty shit makeup on top of them to do it really took me out of the movie. I would spend a few minutes each time they appeared in a new role trying to figure out which actor was playing that role. It also took the whole premise of the movie (that we live multiple lives over the centuries connected to the same souls over and over) and just hammered it into your skull over and over again, rather than letting it be revealed organically by the story. It makes Somni's speech at the end, which pretty much sums up the movie for the thickies, and robbed it of dramatic impact because by the time you've gotten to it, you've been beaten senseless by terrible makeup jobs on the same actors over and over. I'm also not entirely sure it was necessary to chop up each vignette they way they did but that may be more related to the book. It does allow for some dramatic impact when all the endings flow into each other so I'm not sure if telling each story in a linear fashion would have helped or hindered it.

The visuals (aside from makeup) were stunning, and the score beautiful. This could have potentially been a masterpiece but instead it's just flawed.

naum
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Reply #73 on: February 18, 2015, 03:48:40 PM

I'm also not entirely sure it was necessary to chop up each vignette they way they did but that may be more related to the book. It does allow for some dramatic impact when all the endings flow into each other so I'm not sure if telling each story in a linear fashion would have helped or hindered it.

The book (which is better, even though I really liked the movie) had to be chopped up or it would have been a dismal movie experience (unless it was cut into a 11 or 12 episode miniseries). In the book, the stories are like an onion -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then after the 6th, they pick up where they left off (and the stories are connected to each other). In making the movie, Wachowskis (& Mitchell, the author, who was surprised and pleased, as he deemed it was an unfilmable exercise to transfer to screen) figured no way would an audience be cool with seeing a new vignette story begin 45-60 minutes into the movie.

HaemishM, you must read it, if just to experience the genius of how Mitchell morphs into tone and style of each writer of the 6 vignettes.

"Should the batman kill Joker because it would save more lives?" is a fundamentally different question from "should the batman have a bunch of machineguns that go BATBATBATBATBAT because its totally cool?". ~Goumindong
Maven
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Reply #74 on: February 19, 2015, 12:32:06 AM

On that alone I'll have to check out the book.
apocrypha
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Reply #75 on: February 19, 2015, 02:27:20 AM

The book is very good, but it took me a couple of tries to get into it. The start of it wasn't what I was expecting at all and it threw me a bit. Very glad I persevered though.

"Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1915.
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