| | Re Sky Captain...: I loved it until the story/plot questions started piling up, the 1st being: "Uh, here come the robots, ok; there's the CD-sirens going off, ok; there's the police units forming up, ok; there's Sky Captain coming, ok....uh....where's the military?" - Then there's: Sky Captain has his own, personal army; hey, ok; the British have their own (uh, 'secret'? really?) air-fortresses, ok; and they're led by Angelina Jolie, now that's REALLY 'OK!'; and SC's base is a mere car-drive from NYC...ok. But, he's the only one with a plane to zoom around NYC? And that plane is more fuel-efficient than my old V-8. And it can dive-bomb into the ocean without cracking up? And how did formerly-captured Dex get hold of the hover-craft in the villain's lair with Bai Ling running around? And...I could go on, but...
I loved the idea; but the execution, story-wise, lacked big-time. And one of my favorite movies is Mary Poppins (and another is Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), so don't get on me about inability re 'suspension of dis-belief.'
Don't get me wrong: I...liked...it. But it could've been so much better done, story-holes-wise. These piled up to distractions.
Re all the cgi used, as I understand from the commentaries on the DVD, there was no other way to do it. Ah-h-h, and the commentaries ! One by the producer, who seemed to either discuss interesting, but irrelevent-to-the-scene-depicted, aspects of the actors or movie-making (or his helping the 1st-time director/writer), or, for the umpty-umpteenth time pointing out that "Here it's just a box and 1 prop with the actors in front of a blue-screen." The second, by the director/writer no less, talking about the sfx technical proficiency in each scene and the difficulty the actors (and he) had.
But no one talked-about-the-story-or-plotline. In short, I found most of each commentary, after their 1st 15 mins, IRrelevent to what I was watching. Which means I watched this sucker 3x; at this point, 2 1/2 times too many. Methinks the writer/story-maker was more intent on 'images' than on (consider: it was very cliched to begin with, non?) the story's...scene/plot...connections.
I'll give this to the actors though: If anyone deserves AA nominations, these actors did; all their acting was with as 'minimalist' a stage-environment as one could be stuck in; they are the ones who MADE the movie believeable (to the extent it distractingly was able to be.) Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie primarily, but also the others.
Also, as an aside, I'll give Oliver Stone this: I just caught Alexander on DVD, and though I got tired after the 3rd time he referred to (artistic) licence, at least his commentary was relevent to each scene and the story (as well as his history-sources.)
Re Atlas Shrugged done in this cgi 30's-'deco'-noir style: I understand the attraction, but, I don't think this'd be good. SC was purposely given a 'dated' look for the fantasy-idea of the times re how the 'future' might be. Were Atlas Shrugged done nowadays, it'd be obvious that one was making it as an anachronism were one to ignore that we now have an ISS, a Mars Landing, an Internet, etc. Think about it. It would HAVE to be contemporized to some degree lest it be considered 'historical'-oriented. We can deal with Shakespeare's 'timeless stories' this way, but not Ayn Rand's. --- Further: granted, thanx to Lucas, we now have movie-'sagas' akin to TV-miniseries, where a given story (SW, The Matrix, Kill Bill, LOTR) is consumer-accepted to take up more than one movie. However, I really don't see AS fitting in here (and it WOULD, to do it justice, take up at least 6 hrs) movie-wise. The last section just wouldn't have enough...pizzazz...for a bona-fide theatrical movie. And for sure, as a whole, it SHOULDN'T be truncated. It needs to be a TV (or, special-to-DVD!) miniseries; no less is worthwhile.
J-D
|
|
