Category: Film

Stuff I Learned this Week – #47/10

Mind over Meta!

Rapunzel – Neu Verföhnt

Es gibt einige Momente in Rapunzel, in denen niemand spricht. In diesen Momenten darf man noch einmal erleben, was Animationsfilm bedeuten kann: Charme und Emotionen übertragen, nur durch die Kraft von bewegten Bildern und nachempfundenen Gesten. Kurze Zeit später fangen dann alle wieder an zu reden und zu singen und der Zauber ist vorbei. Das liegt nicht einmal daran, dass Alexandra Neldel und Moritz Bleibtreu Sache als deutsche Synchronsprecher von Rapunzel und ihrem love interest Flynn Rider irgendwie schlecht machen würden, im Gegenteil. Es fällt einfach nur schwer, hinter all den kitschigen Phrasen irgendetwas anderes als Klischees zu entdecken. Zumal nachdem Filme wie Shrek und Verwünscht diese Klischees schon vor Jahren so treffend entlarvt haben.

Weiterlesen – meine erste Kritik für NEGATIV

Filmmakers defending Skyline against the critics

It’s always fun when this happens. It takes movies beyond their sheer identity as art and entertainment and discusses them as the media circus they are. The Producers of Skyline gave Cinematical an interview, in which they try to defend themselves against the hailstorm of bad reviews their film has garnered so far.

However, rather than lash out and actually defend their film, they actually give in a bit, saying stuff like “Pretense be damned. I know it’s not a perfect movie, but I’ve enjoyed plenty of movies with flaws before”, which is probably one of the worst things you can think about your own work, if you’re trying to stand up for it. Later, they blame the way the film was marketed, as an epigone to Independence Day rather than as a piece of chamber horror with aliens.

I haven’t seen Skyline yet, it hasn’t been released in Germany so far, but I wanted to share this fun bit of Meta-Hollywood. The link again.

Stuff I learned this week – #46/10

Stuff I learned this week – #45/10

Tagline: This time, it’s bilingual!

Requiem // 102

One aspect of the web I haven’t really touched upon very often so far is the great possibilities for collaboration it offers. I am looking forward to becoming part of one such collaboration this month.

Requiem // 102 is a project started by Nick Rombes, an associate professor at the University of Detroit Mercy, that celebrates the tenth anniversary of Darron Aronofsky’s seminal film Requiem for a Dream in a unique way. Rombes has already popularized analyzing films through random frame stills in certain circles. Now he is taking the concept on the road and assigning one frame for each of the 102 minutes of the film to 102 people on the web, who are publishing their analyses of the film one day at a time. There were/are still frames to be had so I wrote to Nick and now I will publish my take on Requiem for a Dream based on a frame by the end of the month.

I have somehow managed to not see Requiem for a Dream yet, and I haven’t read much about it either, so I will try to add a fresh perspective to the project.

This form of collaborative film studies will hopefully yield a fascinating mosaic of interpretative angles and be fun at the same time. Check it out on its Tumblr-Blog and Twitter feed.

Thanks to Dan North for posting about the project

Stuff I learned this week – #44/10

This is the attempt to install a new weekly link feature in this blog, similar to the way Worte zum Wochenende used to be.

Tron Night: Something to Feast Your Eyes On

Geek Buzz has really become important for movie marketing. Last year’s Avatar was the first film to actually preview around twenty minutes of footage for audiences several months before the film’s release in the hope of building up a positive word-of-mouth vibe for the film’s release (a strategy that seemed to have worked; even though audiences on the whole weren’t too thrilled about the preview footage). The maker’s of Tron Legacy, a late sequel to 1982’s Tron, tried the same tonight.

They did a good job. Even though the storyline for Legacy looks as preposterous as that of its predecessor, the preview footage shows that the new film will definitely be something to look forward to for lovers of excellent imagery. As could be glimpsed in the trailer, Tron Legacy stays true to Tron‘s original backlit, “black theatre” look while adding some more CGI-cool. This world of dark grey tones, nerved by fluorescent lights, is really something you haven’t seen for a while. It manages to conjure up 80s nostalgia while still looking pretty nifty by today’s standards.

In addition, director Joseph Kosinski and his team really seem to get 3D and use it in the narrative way Alice in Wonderland inexplicably didn’t. The non-computer-world is 2D, making the 3D world of the computer system (ironically, the “simulated” world, of course) exquisitely hyperreal. However, they go beyond that: The preview footage included the scene in which Sam (Garrett Hedlund) discovers the old lab of his father Flynn (Jeff Bridges) but left out the actual transition scene from Earth to Grid. However, when Sam discovers the secret door behind the “Tron” video game and descends into the lab, i.e. gets closer to the computer world, the image slowly but steadily gained depth while staying 2D, cleverly anticipating and foreshadowing what’s to come. The only other movie that used 3D in this psychological way so far, was the amazing Coraline.

The verdict: “Tron Night” worked for me. I am definitely looking forward to Tron Legacy, at least for a good two hours of fun in the cinema.

Legend of the Guardians: Five Notes on the Owls of Ga’Hoole

1. This is what 3D is supposed to feel like. Zack Snyders trademark style, which basically lets the camera rule the space-time continuum it inhabits, lends itself perfectly to the new way of telling stories. While Snyder hardly makes use of z-axis space to convey information he couldn’t bring across in 2D, his great advantage in Legend of the Guardians is that he actually has three dimensions to move in. Almost all of the film is spent either in flight or in trees (which also means movement in three dimensions) and this is where 3D really shines. Add to that Snyders famous slo-mo-shots and some sweeping vistas and your eyes can’t stop ogling the beauty you are presented with on screen. Watching Legend of the Guardians really makes you wish, 300 and Watchmen had been in 3D. 300, especially, a film without a plot to speak of that lives purely by its visuals, could have been enhanced no end by stereoscopy. If he carries on like this with the movies he has lined up (Sucker Punch and Superman), Snyder might become one of the most prolific 3D directors around.

2. Snyders treatment of Kathryn Lasky’s novels confirms my earlier thesis that we have a lot to look forward to, if more live action directors with a clear thematic profile take to animation. Legend of the Guardians overtly reflects Snyders preoccupation with the fascist imagery and ideology of grandeur and fights of the weak against the self-styled strong. It is probably owed to the fact that Legends is aimed at kids that the lines of good and evil are drawn in an extremely simplistic way here.

3. Kudos to Animal Logic for their pitch-perfect creature and effects animation. They got to practice beaks and feathers in Happy Feet and really make the most of it in Legends. Owls, with their round faces and crooked beaks, probably topped the list of animals least likely to be anthropomorphised as heroes until this point, but the animators really did a superb job in making them believable, likeable and distinguishable. Much of this can be attributed to the realistic fluffiness of the feathers, which really serve their purpose to give every owl its individual character.

4. I have not read Kathryn Lasky’s book that the film is based on, but it wasn’t difficult to glimpse the detailed and imaginative world that Lasky has probably created in her series of novels through the bric-a-brac script that strives to cram every bit of Ga’Hoole mythology into 100 minutes of film while still leaving enough time for action sequences. The result is a desaster: The film jumps from one scene to another with hardly any transition, introduces new characters and plot twists by the minute and leaves no time at all for contemplation in much the same way that The Golden Compass or Inkheart did two or three years earlier. When will Hollywood finally stop turning fantasy novels that live by their worldbuilding into movies that pale in comparison? Hasn’t film history proven over and over again that – when it comes to fantasy genre films – short stories, novellas and graphic novels make much better source material? TV minseries are a much better medium to capture the intricacies of novels as this one, even if it means sacrificing some visual kablooie.

5. Even Rocky had a montage. But the training/getting to know their new home montage of Legends is an incredibly weak piece of filmmaking the film could have totally done without. It adds almost nothing to the exposition monologue which one of the characters, who is probably important in the novel but extremely flat here, just gave a few minutes earlier. The montage is also accompanied by a pop song which breaks with the whole atmosphere of the movie, but had to be included because it makes tie-in money and because it fits perfectly with this artist called Owl city. Get it? Because they are in a city of owls. Mercy! Please!

Addendum: Zack Snyder talks quite detailed about his 3D-ideas here and there is an extensive series of interviews with the key creatives of the film here.

In 50 Jahren um die Welt – Sammys Abenteuer

“Sammy’s Avonturen: De geheime doorgang”
Belgien 2010. Regie: Ben Stassen. Buch: Domonic Paris. Musik: Ramin Djawadi. Produktion: Gina Gallo, Mimi Maynard, Domonic Paris, Ben Stassen, Caroline van Iseghem.
Sprecher (deutsche Fassung): Matthias Schweighöfer (Sammy), Lena Meyer-Landrut (Shelly), Axel Stein (Ray), Achim Reichel (Slim), Thomas Fritsch (Erzähler).
Länge: 88 min.
Verleih: Kinowelt.
Kinostart: 28.10.2010

Sammy ist so etwas wie der Forrest Gump unter den Meeresschildkröten. Er schlüpft 1950 aus dem Ei und ist von Anfang an ein bisschen langsamer als seine Geschwister. So wird er schnell zum Einzelgänger, entwickelt aber gleichzeitig eine magische Anziehungskraft für schicksalhafte Begegnungen. Erst wenige Minuten alt rettet er seiner zukünftigen großen Liebe Shelly (auch als Synchronsprecherin enorm knuffig: Lena Meyer-Landrut) das Leben, hinaus aufs große Meer treibt er ebenso zufällig wie er später seinen besten Freund (Axel Stein) kennenlernt, wieder verliert und einer Gruppe von Hippies in die Arme schwimmt. Deren Lektüre von “In 80 Tagen um die Welt” weckt in ihm die große Abenteuerlust, die er erst in Richtung Südpol und dann auf der Suche nach der geheimen Passage in den Atlantik – dem Panamakanal – auslebt.

Der belgische Regisseur Ben Stassen ist eine der treibenden Kräfte hinter dreidimensionaler Computeranimation im europäischen Raum, sein erster Langfilm FLY ME TO THE MOON kam etwas zu früh in die Kinos, um den großen 3D-Hype im vergangenen Jahr wirklich mitzunehmen. Stassen stammt aus der IMAX-Tradition des 3D-Kinos, und auch SAMMYS ABENTEUER ist an vielen Stellen noch sichtbar von “old school”-3D-Denken geprägt. Der Film verlässt sich statt auf eine stringente Story und glaubhafte Charaktere lieber auf effektreiche 3D-Inszenierung mit Pop-Out-Effekten und Flugsimulationen, pendelt im Design allerdings trotzdem merkwürdig unentschlossen zwischen Realismus und Abstraktion (beispielsweise in der Animation von Wasser und Sand). Die Handlung kommt indes ähnlich sperrig daher wie der umständliche und irreführende Titel. Die Suche nach dem Weg in die Karibik ist eben nur eins der vielen Abenteuer, die Sammy im Laufe seines 50-jährigen Lebens mitnimmt. Charaktere und Schauplätze wechseln im Zehnminutentakt, viele von ihnen haben keine andere Funktion, als dem merkwürdig eigenschaftslosen Hauptcharakter (passenderweise gesprochen von Matthias Schweighöfer) einen Schubs in die richtige Richtung zu versetzen.

Dass es diesem Hauptcharakter ein wenig an Motivation fehlt, erklärt vielleicht auch den überflüssigen Voiceover-Kommentar des alten Sammy, der auf sein Leben zurückblickt und das gerade Gesehene regelmäßig zusammenfasst und kommentiert. Eigentlich besitzen die ökologisch-pädagogischen Motive des Films rund um Erderwärmung und Artenschutz eine angenehme Ambivalenz – denn die menschlichen Spuren in der Natur helfen Sammy und seinen Freunden fast genauso oft wie sie ihnen schaden. Statt jedoch auch den jüngeren Zuschauern des Films ein wenig eigenes Urteilsbewusstsein zuzutrauen, verlassen sich die Filmemacher lieber darauf, diese Ambivalenz immer wieder in ungelenken Formulierungen hinauszuposaunen. Als hätte nicht gerade der Animationsfilm in den letzten Jahren immer wieder bewiesen, dass Filme, die Kindern gefallen ohne Erwachsenen auf die Nerven zu gehen, kein Widerspruch in sich sind.

geschrieben für Screenshot Online