The New World

Started by edison, December 09, 2004, 12:09:28 AM

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Pozer


grand theft sparrow

Quote from: modage on January 11, 2006, 11:34:30 AM
Quote from: modage on December 30, 2005, 11:11:26 PM
didnt [work]
length
looks like Malick and I see eye to eye.


The first thing I thought of was all the complaints that Thin Red Line was so long, which it was long, but it was still great and if Malick is cutting damn near 20 minutes from this and left Thin Red Line alone... then DAMN!

Sunrise

To make things even more confusing, Malick has an approximately three-hour cut in mind for the dvd (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/13/movies/13shor.html).

Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that by the time this gets to dvd there will have been three different versions released on one medium or another? And the article also expresses that Malick prefers the shortest version for the theater and the longer version for dvd. I guess the positive is that he is apparently "approving" both versions. However, even though I'm a fan of Malick's work, I prefer the approach Scorsese takes with dvd in that the cut that appears in theaters is what we see in our homes as well.

modage

that article for anyone who doesnt want to sign-up...

Films in Need of a Little Nip and Tuck
Source: NY Times
By CARYN JAMES
Published: January 13, 2006

"The New World," Terrence Malick's poetic film about John Smith, Pocahontas and the Jamestown settlement, played for a week last month in New York and Los Angeles, but that version is already obsolete. "The New World" that will open around the country next Friday runs two-and-a-quarter hours, 15 minutes shorter than its earlier incarnation (whose brief run qualified it for Academy Awards) and a lot shorter than the three-hour cut Mr. Malick is preparing for the DVD release. The original is now something like "The New World 1.0," and you might wonder if these multiplying versions are part of some Microsoft-inspired marketing ploy, the film equivalent of the endless tinkering that makes you keep updating Windows.

Mr. Malick, who doesn't give interviews, wasn't about to explain himself, but the film's producer, Sarah Green, did it for him in a telephone interview. Like anybody else, she said, "Terry gets impatient sitting in theaters," and while preparing the DVD of "The New World" he saw that the film he had raced to deliver to New Line for the qualifying Oscar run "would play better if it were tightened up a little." He initiated the change, and people at New Line - with a sleeker, shorter movie to sell - must have felt as if they'd won the lottery.

The common-sensical view that an audience might actually have a better experience if the film were tauter is rare among directors, especially this season when some of the most prominent movies are needlessly long. These films achieve their bloated status for different reasons: the old "New World" and "Brokeback Mountain" (running 2 hours and 14 minutes) take too much time getting started. If the audience knows that the English settlers will land and the cowboys will turn out to be gay, the movies shouldn't waste 15 minutes getting there.

Both Peter Jackson's popcorn movie "King Kong," a gargantuan 3 hours 7 minutes, and Steven Spielberg's ultraserious "Munich," 2 hours and 44 minutes, seem slacker than they should, probably because their powerful directors can do whatever they want. Who's going to tell them no? What all these films have in common, though, is that their length adds minutes likely to make viewers fidget instead of drawing them in.

As Mr. Malick realized, the issue is not length itself, but what works on screen. The original "New World" created the satisfying sense of having been through an epic experience, following Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) from her innocent youth, through her romance with Smith (Colin Farrell), her marriage to another settler, John Rolfe (Christian Bale) and her trip to London, where she is presented to the king. But that version also included more of what Ms. Green calls "leisure shots" and others might call travelogues: pretty pictures of birds flying, water flowing, trees growing, many appearing at the start, when Pocahontas inhabits a world before the English.

Those preliminary scenes, which slowed things down, have been trimmed, and the voice-overs - interior monologues in which Pocahontas and Smith meditate on their lives - are less likely to accompany picturesque views of nature. Instead, Ms. Green said, the voice-over "pulls you into the next scene." The editing was the kind of snipping that, like a good face-lift, should be inconspicuous if it works. Besides, Mr. Malick can put it all back (and more) in the DVD. "He always had it in mind that he would make a longer version that would allow people to take bathroom breaks," Ms. Green said.

Films aren't all about plot, of course, and artistically a work may need time to establish its characters and its pace. But viewers now walk into theaters already so crammed with information about the film that those establishing scenes almost take care of themselves. A 2-hour-and-14-minute movie isn't unusual today - the bloat has been happening for years - but "Brokeback Mountain" spends so much time offering scenic views of the range and all those sheep that you begin to wonder if Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger's characters are ever going to sidle up to each other. The film takes off only after their romance begins, nearly a half-hour in.

There is an anomaly behind these elephantine movies: as viewers' attention spans seem to grow shorter, accustomed to fragmented computer screens and television sound bites, films get longer, hoping to compete by creating an event. The hugely hyped "King Kong" gained even more publicity when word arrived that it had ballooned to more than three hours. The problem with "Kong" isn't the setup, though. The first section, in which the starving actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) is hired by the film producer Carl Denham (Jack Black) and they make their way to Skull Island, is entertaining enough to sustain its 45 minutes.

The slackness arrives with the special effects, those magical tricks that Mr. Jackson seems so reluctant to trim. There aren't entire sequences that need to be cut from "Kong." (Well, maybe the too-cute episode in which Kong ice skates in Central Park en route to the Empire State Building.) But each set piece - the rampaging dinosaurs, the spiders, those toothy-wormy things that look like refugees from the "Alien" movies - includes a few scenes too many. And there are too many lingering shots of Kong's face and expressive eyes. These are signs of a director so enamored with his own clever accomplishments that he sacrifices the pacing of the film. Snipping a few seconds here and there would have made it a little shorter and much sleeker.

The far more trenchant "Munich" has a terrific beginning, too. Mr. Spielberg swiftly and horrifyingly depicts the murders of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, then introduces the Israelis assigned to retaliate. But after Avner (Eric Bana) and his team begin to hunt down the 11 men on their list, the film settles into a repetitious pattern. There are slight variations in the action; bombs are planted in different places. Every now and then that action stops so the characters can question the morality or effectiveness of what they're doing. About two hours in, viewers might begin to worry that the film will drag them through all 11 names. In fact, the team doesn't assassinate all its targets, but as the body count rises over a half-dozen - and some of the Israelis are killed in return - the murders blur together in a way that lessens their impact.

Mr. Spielberg made "Munich" quickly, and at times it shows. You can almost see where the screenplay, by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth, was stitched together, the philosophical and the action halves never making a cohesive whole. Its best parts - the moral questioning of political assassination, Avner's emotional anguish - are so good that you wish Mr. Spielberg had made a more cogent, compressed film, one that matched his ambition. In such cases, a Malick-like return to the editing room can seem like inspiration rather than a director's indulgence.
Christopher Nolan's directive was clear to everyone in the cast and crew: Use CGI only as a last resort.

Sunrise

Thanks for posting the full article. Completely slipped my mind not everyone would be able to link to it without signing up.

pete

SPOILER

I just saw this movie and never have I been in a theater with a more hateful audience.  I saw so many walkouts and people laughed when the credits started rolling, sarcastically cheering and clapping their hands.  They were so urgently picking up their phones and so quick to call it the worst movie ever and such and such.  It was a little bit heartbreaking.  I can safely be a snob and say this is a filmlover's film, it's Ozu in the West, it's rewarding only to people who like to absorb and experience rather than process information.  I mean, that much is obvious, but this film really separates us from them, the lovers from assholes.  I bet it'll be encouraging someday when you make a film that everyone hates and you can remind yourself, hey, I walked outta A New World where everyone reacted the same exact way.

Okay, onto the film itself, I don't really have that much to say about it, it's great and I actually did not expect the ending.  It was heartbreaking, but everything happened so naturally and logically, it made the "cultivation" of Pocahontas that much more human and convincing--that it wasn't just some kinda nostalgia/ white guilt--it mourned the tragedy of complacency and was able to make complacency as tragic and as epic as any other type of downfall--pride and greed and lust and what have you.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

Pozer

You just gotta love lines like this from the reviewer at CNN:

Watching "The New World" is like watching a snail cross an eight-lane highway. Perhaps there's a director, or editor, who could make that concept enthralling, but as for me, I kept longing that Jerry Bruckheimer would speed along in a Hummer and squish it flat.

Sal

That guy got paid to write that, too.

Sunrise

This could be the first time that a critic has longed for Bruckheimer. Let's hope it's the last.

Pozer

Sure enough the best film of the year!

How could I have expected any lesser.  To think I actually worried a bit with early negative buzz toward its slow pacing and lack of story.  This film is full of beauty painted with a combination of tender and aggressive strokes by an artist who never fails to show how he puts great care into his masterworks.  The music blending into sounds of nature, the extravagant costume and set design, the sweet sound and mix of poetic narratives, the wonderful Q'orianka Kilcher who captivates each emotion she's put through so amazingly with hardly muttering a word, Colin Farrell's portrayal of a man who his both sensitive and uncapable of love, the illuminating photography that sketches and guides Malick's vision... a fourth masterpiece indeed from an artist who simply stays true to his form.

w/o horse

It's my King Kong.

I should say more.

Spoilers.

A maturation of Malick as a filmmaker, storyteller, and moralist.

I want to express to you how the autumn camp turning into the winter camp affected me.  How the young boys pleaing to Smith affected me, and how the arrival of Pocahontas shortly after told the end of the story at the height of the middle of the story.  Who did not think that they themselves would prefer the colony to England?  The hedge field maze.  The tile floors.  It felt as ridiculous to all of you as it did to me, right?  The blooming colony on the swampland, Smith deadend in the artic.  Quiet moments in the tall grass.

Perhaps I can only express how much I enjoyed the movie by describing the movie.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Quote from: pozer on January 20, 2006, 01:36:34 PM
You just gotta love lines like this from the reviewer at CNN:

Watching "The New World" is like watching a snail cross an eight-lane highway. Perhaps there's a director, or editor, who could make that concept enthralling, but as for me, I kept longing that Jerry Bruckheimer would speed along in a Hummer and squish it flat.

How can you write that and not just feel the invalidation setting in?

No matter who it's about... the man could really not like Malick, but to express impatience for some Bruckheimer action, it seems a dead giveaway that you probably shouldn't be reviewing movies.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

samsong

Quote from: Losing the Horse: on January 21, 2006, 01:14:39 AM
It's my King Kong.

I should say more.

Spoilers.

A maturation of Malick as a filmmaker, storyteller, and moralist.

I want to express to you how the autumn camp turning into the winter camp affected me.  How the young boys pleaing to Smith affected me, and how the arrival of Pocahontas shortly after told the end of the story at the height of the middle of the story.  Who did not think that they themselves would prefer the colony to England?  The hedge field maze.  The tile floors.  It felt as ridiculous to all of you as it did to me, right?  The blooming colony on the swampland, Smith deadend in the artic.  Quiet moments in the tall grass.

Perhaps I can only express how much I enjoyed the movie by describing the movie.

...what?

w/o horse

Quote from: samsong on January 22, 2006, 09:56:49 PM
Quote from: Losing the Horse: on January 21, 2006, 01:14:39 AM
It's my King Kong.

I should say more.

Spoilers.

A maturation of Malick as a filmmaker, storyteller, and moralist.

I want to express to you how the autumn camp turning into the winter camp affected me.  How the young boys pleaing to Smith affected me, and how the arrival of Pocahontas shortly after told the end of the story at the height of the middle of the story.  Who did not think that they themselves would prefer the colony to England?  The hedge field maze.  The tile floors.  It felt as ridiculous to all of you as it did to me, right?  The blooming colony on the swampland, Smith deadend in the artic.  Quiet moments in the tall grass.

Perhaps I can only express how much I enjoyed the movie by describing the movie.

...what?

I think that it was Malick touching the most humane aspects of his poetry.  That he stripped away satire and inexperience and came to pure beauty of truth and emotion and nothing else.

I had this great visceral experience in which my emotions were entirely obliged to an ethereal plain.  I did not sense a recognitive value to the film but rather felt that it touched inside a deep chamber of emotion which is withheld from many mainstream films.  It stirred me with its transcendence, and I felt at once in love and at once torn from that same love.  I questioned modern values and understood Malick's motive of questioning the same; I felt that the temperamental values we place on objects and space were challenged with supreme validity and the opulent and supressive England was a fine choice to verify this speculation.  The entire film was subjective but it felt whole and complete which are the cornerstones of objectivity which left me conflicted which made me like the film more.  I can express this most clearly by describing the film which most confuses that who want to understand the film with tired, hackneyed reviews.

I liked the film a lot and can only express that by telling you the scenes and hoping you enjoyed them in the same way.  It's my King Kong = it was the experience I was waiting for all year.

Better, worse?  I don't know.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

Sunrise

This film was a wonderful experience. I agree with what pozer said above...especially the blending of the score with natural sounds in the film's opening sequence and again toward its conclusion. In fact, the entire opening sequence is astonishing and that goes for how the "naturals", English, and I felt. Spoilers--I loved how the native Americans touched the English's clothes and garments...reminded me of ape-man's reaction to the monolith in 2001--end spoilers.

The contrasts between the naturals and the English could not have been more straightforward. That goes for their respective camps, the ideals and beliefs of community shown by each, and, of course, unsettled America vs. London in 1616. There is nothing substantively new here (the West needs to conquer, rather than coexist, with nature and other civilizations), but Malick's imagery and the surrogates used, especially Q'Orianka Kilcher, are inspirational.

There seems to be a general malaise out there right now for this film, but that may be just an unwillingness to engage Malick's unique style. I would encourage everyone to give it a chance and you will hopefully feel as rewarded as I do.