Timewaster's Guide Archive
Departments => Movies and TV => Topic started by: Spriggan on July 19, 2006, 06:31:03 PM
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http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1430&dep=4
And here he is trying to direct the next harry potter (he was the studio's original choice for the first movie).
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What did you mean in the line: " Howard, who was easily the strongest element in The Village, brings a mixture of childlike innocence and ageless wisdom to her role."
Is this Howard's influence on the actor, or the beings known as narfs?
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I think that's referring to Howard the actress not Howard the director.
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Mmmm... that would make more sense. However, he does mention Ron Howard in that paragraph so it threw me off.
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Good review.
I think the clocks are a little out - the review was more positive than I expect from a 3.5. Thats traditionally been 'it's ok but don't go out of your way for it'. While the review seemed more like a 4 to me - 'good, but not going to be remembered as a great'.
Also, we could have done with a few hyperlinks scattered around this review - mainly to Shalymans other movies, which were referenced repeatedly. Movie links should be to our reviews of them, rather than to imdb.
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Am I the only person who found The Village enjoyable? Sure, the twist was dumb, but the tone (the "feel") was incredible. The cinematography was wonderful. The characters were great. I get the feeling that most bad reviews of the movie were based more on ongoing frustration with Shyamalan's formula than on the movie itself.
(Note: I'm certainly not saying that it was a four star movie, but I can't see it as anything less than three.)
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I liked the Village. I have my own copy I watch every once in a while. I like the romance, the tone, and the main characters. Signs was too scary for me, but the Village was just right (yes, I'm a fraidy cat).
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I liked the Village. I think it was beautifully crafted. I didn't care for the twist ending, but the whole production was wonderful.
So I'm kind of torn about Lady in the Water. I like the atmosphere of Shayamalan's films, but I realize that he needs to work on his plotting. So it's wether or not I can put up with rumored bad plotting and just enjoy it for the quality craftsmanship.
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Good review.
I think the clocks are a little out - the review was more positive than I expect from a 3.5. Thats traditionally been 'it's ok but don't go out of your way for it'. While the review seemed more like a 4 to me - 'good, but not going to be remembered as a great'.
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As far as the clocks are concerned, that's not up to me, but my definition of 3 star is "Solidly entertaining and worth seeing, but nothing to get too excited about." This was a seriously flawed movie, but in the end, I simply can't deny that I had a lot of fun with it.
As for "The Village," I enjoyed the atmosphere, but there were just SO MANY errors in judgement made by the writer/director. The scene with William Hurt and Bryce Dallas Howard (the Howard that I was referring to, though I see the basis for the confusion) in the woodshed, where we learned the secrets of the monsters, was one of the biggest missteps in movie history. Anyone who can put two and two together and not come up with 22 knew right then and there that the only logical reason for this deception was the fact that the story took place now. Consequently, there was no tension whatsover when Howard was being pursued by the monster, which we knew wasn;t really a monster. Now, if you edit out the woodshed scene alltogether, you'd still have a movie full of plot holes, but you'd at least have a twist that would have left you feeling surprised.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about logic, why the hell did this group of psuedo intellectuals choose to live their lives without penicillin? Does that really qualify as one of the evils of the outisde world? These people weren't Chrsitian Scientists, for crying out loud. They just thought society had become corrupt. They would have had to have a village doctor, and he would have been resonsible for going into town and getting resupplied now and again.
I mean, think about it: this was a fictional world they lived, one that seemed like one part "Little House on The Prairie," one part "The Crucible," and just a dash of Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" thrown in for good measure. Why go to so much effort to maintain the illusion of a specific time period? It wasn't for the benefit of the children of the town, but for the audience, so Capatin Ego could pull one over on the "howdedodats" in the audience, who are smarter than this jerk gives them credit for.
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NINE percent on RT. That's just... wow.
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I've never seen The Village, primarily because I thought that Signs was one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. I was very excited to hear that Lady in the Water was a break from the formula, but if it's not then that's very disappointing.
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I can't help but think that the reason Shayamalan's movies are getting progressively worse in the eyes of critics is because they're getting sick of him as a director and person. It's sad when a person's reputation begins to get in the way with the person's work, ala Michael Jackson. I've liked all Shayamalan's films so far, and I think that if each of them had been released under a pen name or something, people would have been more wowed by them. Sixth Sense got into the hype machine, and when Shayamalan emerged, I think the press had tainted him, turned him into something else. Now that same press is criticizing a monster it helped to create.
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I can't help but think that the reason Shayamalan's movies are getting progressively worse in the eyes of critics is because they're getting sick of him as a director and person. Â It's sad when a person's reputation begins to get in the way with the person's work, ala Michael Jackson. Â I've liked all Shayamalan's films so far, and I think that if each of them had been released under a pen name or something, people would have been more wowed by them. Â Sixth Sense got into the hype machine, and when Shayamalan emerged, I think the press had tainted him, turned him into something else. Â Now that same press is criticizing a monster it helped to create.
I see your point, but I think people would have watched those other movies and thought "their just trying to make another Sixth Sense." The stamp is unmistakable.
I think your accusation about the press helping to create a monster and then tearing it down is valid - Tim Burton, Kevin Costner, Leo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck are all examples of this, just to name a few - but the fact is, for whatever reason, Shymalan seems more concerned with his image than his his actual work.
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I've never seen The Village, primarily because I thought that Signs was one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. I was very excited to hear that Lady in the Water was a break from the formula, but if it's not then that's very disappointing.
As science fiction, "Signs" is idiotic. From a pure science standpoint the idea of aliens who are destroyed by water is a blatant violation of the immutable laws of physics, which are the same on every planet. Any astrophycist who past 5th grade will tell there are two thing necessary to support life: Water, and energy. No, this couldn't be different because it's on a different planet. That's fairy tale thinking, and about as sound as "In Rand McNally they wear shoes on their heads and hamburgers eat people."
That said, as a character study, I thought "Signs" was by far Shyamalan's most compelleing film. It's the only one I've bothered to watch multiple times.
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As science fiction, "Signs" is idiotic. From a pure science standpoint the idea of aliens who are destroyed by water is a blatant violation of the immutable laws of physics, which are the same on every planet. Any astrophycist who past 5th grade will tell there are two thing necessary to support life: Water, and energy.
Hehe, then you take collgiate astrophysics and learn that the reason physiscists argue all of the time is because they disagree on these immutable laws.
Quantum tunneling came from the discovery that the sun is temperature is off for how fast the atoms are moving inside. Therefore they must just be jumping around without actually moving.
The scientists at ground zero for the first nuclear warhead were taking bets for whether or not they would start a fuse that would actually ignite the entire world. They decided it wouldn't. But if cold fusion were possible, it would have fused, and ignited the next atom, which would ignite the next would would etc......
Hehehe. when you get down to it, we really know nothing of physics. Ask a scientist or a professor.
This is a good one:
So, an object will do exactly what it did 5 seconds ago unless something acted on it. Everything was together (even time and space) before the big bang. What acted on the infinite mass to make it blow up?
"We don't know"
some physics we have not discovered?
Who knows.
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Problems with your argument:
There are laws that they do agree upon. And the science in Signs was, at best, absurd. Though I love the film.
With the Big Bang, we don't *know* what the matter was like even nanoseconds before this proposed explosion. It could be that the instant this "infinite mass" was formed it blew up: forming the mass itself causing the explosion. Nothing before the big bang is *measurable*. This by no stretch of the imagination means that before the Big Bang there was *nothing*.
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Why do we even have those formatting functions available?
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Yes, but we don't know if the Big Bang ever really happened.
IMO, the science in Signs was a stretch. As in the ideas it proposed are rather distant from current scientific beliefs.
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no, we don't. But the basis on which FMJ tries to make it appear absurd is flawed at the least.
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The thing with Signs is that's it's a character movie. He had these great characters and then threw them into a scary situation that only turned silly in the last 10 minutes of the movie (though I admit I loved seeing River Phoenix smashing the alien with a baseball bat). So it's like M just threw together a ok, all be-it hokey, plot for his characters to act in.
As for the science, who cares? How often is any Sci-fi movie actually accurate? And you can't complain about anything in this movie if you like any star wars movie, Star Trek, aliens, superman, spiderman, ect.
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The thing with Signs is that's it's a character movie. Â He had these great characters and then threw them into a scary situation that only turned silly in the last 10 minutes of the movie (though I admit I loved seeing River Phoenix smashing the alien with a baseball bat). Â So it's like M just threw together a ok, all be-it hokey, plot for his characters to act in.
As for the science, who cares? Â How often is any Sci-fi movie actually accurate? Â And you can't complain about anything in this movie if you like any star wars movie, Star Trek, aliens, superman, spiderman, ect.
Spriggan - I agree with you on much of this - it was indeed a good character movie, and it was only the last ten minutes that realy got silly (what with all of the bits with the water glasses, "Swing away," etc, I somehow expected the EXTRA BACON on Mel's Cheesburger to figure into the alien's demise).
The point oabout the science is avalid one, but this movie was setting itself up to be taken more seriously than STAR WARS or SUPERMAN - "Signs" was supposed to feel as if it took place in the real world, and it didn't. Still, I like the film a lot. The fact is, it's one of Gibson's best performances.
One last note: RIVER Phoenix was suffering from a serious bout with death at the time "Signs" was filmed, and to my knowledge has not yet recovered. It was his brother JOAQUIN who beat the terrible visual effect to death with the bat.
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With the Big Bang, we don't *know* what the matter was like even nanoseconds before this proposed explosion. It could be that the instant this "infinite mass" was formed it blew up: forming the mass itself causing the explosion. Nothing before the big bang is *measurable*. This by no stretch of the imagination means that before the Big Bang there was *nothing*.
The physics of the big bang say that all space and time were in one spot while the piece of mass was floating around. Which means, 1. Space did not exist. 2. Time did not exist.
The "ball" if you will never came together because all time and space were together. The big bang happened everywhere, becuse everywhere was all in one spot. IThere was never a time before it, since time was all in one spot.
You can't measure anything before, because it didn't exist according to the most commonly accepted version of the theory. It's not something that came together, it is something that happened.
So, where did it come from, what was it doing? The physics answer is that we cannot comprehend it.
According to all observations, all parts of the universe are moving away from each other at an equal pace, and all parts, when moved backwards, come from each other.
My whole point is that physics do nothing more than tell us what we have observed. Just because you have not observed something does not mean it cannot exist.
Scientists argue all the time because they observe the same things diferent ways.
Don't get me wrong, the movie Signs is absurd.
Again, all I am saying is that all science is based on observation and that sometimes our observations our wrong, or contridict themselves.
A better example would be that our laws of thermodynamics both prove and disprove the idea of cold fusion or zero point energy.
It's all where you observe it. We don't know the absolute truth of the matter.
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no. the theory of the big bang does not state that time and space did not exist. All it states is that all matter blew up at that particular time. Since anything before that is not measureable, scientists say nothing about what it was like an instant before hand. I have never read or heard a believer in the big bang state that there was only ever this hyper dense mass of matter that nothing pre-existed. I believe that's an interpretation put on it by those who want to disprove it. They *do* say that we have no way of knowing what happened before -- though I believe many adherants believe that the universe expands then contracts, resulting in a series of big bangs. But not knowing what was before is a distant cry from saying that there was nothing else.
My belief is that your misunderstanding comes from the frequent statement that the big bang describes the universe back to an "age" of 1/100 of a second. The idea, however, is not that everything popped into existence 1/100 of a second before what we predict, but that we don't know what/where things were 1/100 of a second before that instant, though we're fairly confident (if we believe in the theory) that there was *something* 1/100 of a second prior.
You may want to read this article about misconcpetions of the Big Bang (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147) in Scientific American. While it doesn't directly address this concern you have, some of the explanations there invalidate the set up you create for this problem (noteably that the theory never states that every piece of matter in existence was all in one space the size of a grapefruit).
As for "universal disagreement," listing some of the debates that scientists are still working out is hardly a demonstration that no, or even most, of the accepted scientific principles are in serious question -- especially when those examples are about the frontiers of scientific discovery. Naturally, I would expect that every princple has someone to disagree with it. But just because there's an idiot in a coal mine in West Virginia who didn't get past first grade in school who thinks a princple is wrong doesn't mean we can't have confidence in that principle.