Gravity

Started by modage, February 25, 2010, 05:50:17 PM

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Lottery

It's good but it describes the events which sets up th entire film (which could be considered a spoiler in a 90 minute film).

Take home points:

- David Fincher said they'd need to wait 5 years for movie space tech
- Came from an idea Cuaron's son had, Cuaron said lets put it in space
- Very unconventional filming
- Technology is astounding, difficult
- Cuaron is awesome, never comprises vision, the last best hope for cinema
- Sandra Bullock is way better than anyone ever thought
- James Cameron fucking loves it
- Lubezki was scared of the project but is also a genius
- Gravity is difficult
- Long takes

MacGuffin

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Neil

it's not the wrench, it's the plumber.

polkablues

Just put this movie in front of my face already.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Fernando

like P said somewhere, this is the year of teasers and trailers, Gravity alone could take two spots in the xixawards.

matt35mm

All right, forgive me but I'm just gonna repost my Facebook thoughts:

GRAVITY is great sight to behold. It's rare to see such a bold and ambitious vision so uncompromisingly put up onto the screen. The sound design is just as marvelous as the eye-popping visuals. It's a movie that really makes you want to drink in every frame of it.

But. I'd say a good third of the dialogue really distracted me, making it difficult to totally sink into the experience. The attempts to bring more depth to the characters (particularly the Ryan Stone character played by Sandra Bullock) actually end up doing the opposite, making them feel written. I feel like everything was already there to get us to care about everything that was going on; the backstory, exposition, and actual statement of themes and lessons learned only took away from its power.

Bullock's performance is to be greatly admired, though. She's put through hell and asked to do most of it alone, and having to do a lot of interacting with a world that's not actually there, as probably 95% of the movie is CGI. I read up on how they made the movie, and it sounds like it was really, really grueling. But it all ends up good in the movie, so good job Sandy.

Still an amazing movie, despite my disappointment with a third of the dialogue. Particularly if you're interested in special effects being used to stretch the visual language of cinema by testing the limits of where a camera can be, how it can move, and how it can look at things, in which case this movie is a must-see.

One of the most brilliant and effective things about GRAVITY is how it solves the problem of "but there's nothing to carry sound in outer space." The trailers are misleading; the sound effects of things crashing and exploding were made just for the commercials.

All you can hear are what the two leads can hear, which is each other's voices and Houston Mission Control (via radio communication) and the muffled sounds of whatever they're physically in contact with. It induces such a claustrophobic feeling that is very effective.

As is per usual, the things that bothered me about the movie fade in my memory while the effective moments stick. It's no A LITTLE PRINCESS but it's still got that Cuaron touch--a mix of easy charm and bold yet sensitive filmmaking.

I once saw him do a twirl as he was taking the last step off an escalator because he thought no one was watching. Then he saw me and The Perineum Falcon from this board and waved at us. This was in London. Y'all should see GRAVITY though. It's good.

P.S. So, I am very interested in 48fps. I don't think that THE HOBBIT was the best movie for it... it was possibly the worst movie for it (though it was still very fascinating to watch). What would have been the best movie for it? GRAVITY!

The positive aspect of 48fps is that 3D is more effectively rendered--things appear more solid and rounded whereas in 24fps, 3D looks like a hologram pop-up book.

The negative aspect of 48fps is things like hobbit/dwarf makeup look stupid it in, and regular rooms with regular camera movements look video gamey. Even the people who hated how THE HOBBIT looked generally appreciated the wide shots of scenery.

I suspect that the visual style of GRAVITY would have worked perfectly in 48fps, and the hyper-realism would have been really really cool and effective. There was no silly makeup so that wouldn't be a problem. Man, it would have been AWESOME.

wilder


Drenk

Great experience, definitely a lot of shivers. But it's not a masterpiece, because the story, the Ryan Stone journey, is really conventional. One scene with her is great, and I thought : "Oh, it's not that bad. I feel something." I thought and I almost cried. And yet, Gravity is still great...Because it's unique.

Cuaròn was there, and he talked about how "Un condamné à mort s'est échappé" (A Man Escaped) from Bresson was an influence (but he said "it's a masterpiece, I just did a space movie"), and not video games. He only knows Pac-Man and Space Invader. And is not very good at them.
Ascension.

samsong

an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here.  it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13.  that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me.  almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence.  i enjoyed it more than children of men.  i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it.  it's intermittently breathtaking.

Kellen

edit - didn't realize that Cuaròn dvd pick was in another section


I thought this was a beautiful film to look at but there wasn't much else going on.  Sandra Bullock was okay, I really didn't care for George Clooney's character all that much though maybe it was some of the dialogue that got to me: like when he says: "I know I'm devastatingly handsome" it just felt out of place I mean your crew members are dead, and she's running out of oxygen.  Maybe I'm looking into it wrong and he was just trying to calm her down because she was freaking out.

Mel



Lots of technical details, just look out for spoiler in the 27th minute.
Simple mind - simple pleasures...

Gold Trumpet

Quote from: samsong on October 04, 2013, 06:28:48 AM
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here.  it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13.  that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me.  almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence.  i enjoyed it more than children of men.  i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it.  it's intermittently breathtaking.

Completely disagree about the idea this is another Apollo 13. If it was, Bullock's traumatic situation would also be connected to a family and crew at home worrying about her situation to amplify the degree of emotional drama to her situation. Howard's film did it because the Apollo 13 story is famous for its effect on American culture so it was trying to represent how people felt when it happened almost live on television at the time. Howard probably also did it because he realized the lack of ability to communicate an investing drama if he just kept it to a crew only story. Gravity has more effects on hand, but it impressively isolates the human story to a few characters. Yes, Bullock is going to be capsized by emotions and reflect on feelings when she feels she is doomed to die, but I'm not sure the film could have avoided that.

picolas

my letterboxd review:

****/*****

all of my problems with this movie are overwhelmed by the visual experience, which is totally awe-inspiring and made me feel as though i was witnessing a new era of filmmaking. anything is possible. for this, gravity nearly transcends a rating, but if i must give one i am minusing a star (letting it off easy) for the following reasons:

- the score. about three minutes in, bullock says "i could get used to the silence". at precisely this moment cuaron decides to begin the score. so bullock is telling us one thing and the filmmaking is doing the exact opposite, robbing us of the silence, and padding the idea for no reason. every piece of music is only there to underline something incredibly obvious. 'this is peaceful!', 'this is scary!' etc. it holds your hand and detracts from the brutality and indifference of space. i think gravity would've taken a quantum leap forward without any score, or at the very least a score that wasn't so tonally obvious and unnecessary.

- the writing is touch and go. sometimes it lends the story a perfect degree of levity, and actually turns humour into a survival mechanism which is pretty cool. there are a lot of moments where the characters are describing things that are happening in front of them, and the movie properly justifies this early on, but as things unfold it becomes less and less believable that bullock would keep making little speeches the way she does. there's also a lot of heartstring-pulling expository stuff that doesn't really make sense in the context of what's going on as well. ultimately i wasn't nearly as moved by the story or characters as i was the visuals, which is unfortunate.

- casting bullock and clooney is generally a good idea for any movie, and they both do a great job. i really liked bullock especially. HOWEVER, casting movie stars inherently detracts from the realism of a movie, and this movie is ALL ABOUT how real everything is. i just know in my heart that no astronaut is that charming or sexy, and if cuaron had cast unknowns i would have believed what i was seeing that much more.

that's about it. i kind of want to go see this again right away.

OH--fuck 3D. it still isn't a good idea. everything's always a little darker, some objects look like floating cutouts, depending on where you sit things go in and out of 3D, and my eyes hurt. i will see this again in 2D for sure.

Cloudy

^Completely 100% agree with this. Very well said. Can't wait to see it again.
Along with those problems you brought up, I thought some of the POV shots felt too similar to video games. I feel like some directors are just more at ease with POV shots than others. They take a delicate hand to really do well. Usually when a director gets the opportunity make a film at this scale, these exact detriments are pretty much going to be a given. As much as he cites "A Man Escaped" as inspiration, everything Picolas just stated are things that are consciously NOT done in a Bresson film. This is the guy that did Harry Potter, as much as a filmmaker's filmmaker he seems to be, he definitely still has his mainstream sentimental impulses all over the place as well. I just tried to ignore them, bc of how miraculous the rest was. 

I sometimes wish it would be easier to talk about a films strengths rather than it's weaknesses bc god damn was that an experience. The images I got to take home and dream about from this film changes your perception of life a bit. So much perspective, as well as the way Cuaron used the concept of perspective in camera work. Like Picolas said, it really felt like watching film history in the making. The actions going on sometimes just felt so unimportant compared to the scale of everything behind it or out the window, which added such a melancholy to the whole thing.

*this would be the third film I was cool with 3D for. Avatar, Prometheus and this. "To watch this non-3D would be watching 20% of the film" -Cuaron. And I believe him. Purely bc the compositions are reliant on this tool, and use it well.

samsong

Quote from: Gold Trumpet on October 06, 2013, 06:20:53 PM
Quote from: samsong on October 04, 2013, 06:28:48 AM
an impressive feat of technical bravura, sure, but there's next to nothing else here.  it's as tepid and cliched a story of human perseverance as, say, apollo 13.  that this is being lauded as unique or "like nothing you've ever seen before" is beyond me.  almost as confounding as cuaron citing bresson as an influence.  i enjoyed it more than children of men.  i do think it's worth seeing purely for the spectacle of it.  it's intermittently breathtaking.

Completely disagree about the idea this is another Apollo 13. If it was, Bullock's traumatic situation would also be connected to a family and crew at home worrying about her situation to amplify the degree of emotional drama to her situation. Howard's film did it because the Apollo 13 story is famous for its effect on American culture so it was trying to represent how people felt when it happened almost live on television at the time. Howard probably also did it because he realized the lack of ability to communicate an investing drama if he just kept it to a crew only story. Gravity has more effects on hand, but it impressively isolates the human story to a few characters. Yes, Bullock is going to be capsized by emotions and reflect on feelings when she feels she is doomed to die, but I'm not sure the film could have avoided that.

I don't see how it being more minimal makes it any less hackneyed, except maybe that there's literally less schlock present.  it's a convenient comparison, admittedly reductive, but I genuinely think that, technical advances aside, they're of equal uselessness.  everything in Gravity that isn't visual is bad, to the point that I found indulging purely in the audiovisual experience impossible.