Ableton Forum

I liked Surrogates too. Loved how the surrogates looked "airbrushed"

Surrogates is based on the graphic novel The Surrogates (2005-6) written by Robert Venditti and illustrated by Brett Weldele.

Another one you might like is 'Strange Days' 1995, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

oblique strategies wrote: Another one you might like is 'Strange Days' 1995, directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

Now that is a movie with some fucked up shiiit in it.

[Rapist/murderer puts "telepresence" headset on his victim so that she experiences what he's seeing/feeling as he rapes and kills her... uhg!]

And directed by a woman! But it's the former Mrs "Iron Jim" Cameron, soooooo....

I couldn't watch Strange Days,
Ralph Feines abysmal "american"? accent was only the start of the awfulness, it got worse as I realised the director had no clue how to handle the material. 50 minutes in and Ms Bigalow still hadn't got to the point and was still labouring away with the interminable backstory and needless exposition.

What do we need here: He's an ex-cop, turned down on his luck virt dealer. His girl ran off with another guy. He gets drawn into a crime ...
But in this film : he has only just pocketed the snuff minidisc at 50 minutes.

He could have just watched his ex grind around on the TV in the bar as his buddy tells him to get over her, and had a brief sales transaction with a virt customer there, left the bar gone home and encountered an envelope with the snuff disc in. BOOM. done. 5 minutes.
No 50 minutes of heinous backstory & exposition.

The most I got out of that film was a lengthy discussion on why good actors can start acting really, really, badly sometimes. Perhaps they smell failure on the set, or in the shooting script and then fail to "commit" to a performance. It was weird, almost everyone one was acting woodenly in the exact same way.


Although, bear in mind this all comes from a man who enjoyed Ghost Rider, so you know, my opinion is pretty broken.

Angstrom wrote:The most I got out of that film was a lengthy discussion on why good actors can start acting really, really, badly sometimes. Perhaps they smell failure on the set, or in the shooting script and then fail to "commit" to a performance. It was weird, almost everyone one was acting woodenly in the exact same way.

How do you explain, or even categorize the off-kilter acting all throughout Blade Runner? Everyone's performance is just, like, weird and completely unnatural... yet it completely works! Is it because the dialogue is just another layer in the soundtrack? As Sir Ridley sez: "Music is dialogue."

I think that Blade runner's affected acting style is matched by the directorial style, long shots and drifty Vangelis music, the slow wordless entry flight to LA with fireballs, or the big ... pauses ... everywhere.. in the dialogue.
It seems that director has some sort of coherent cold future vision. "soak this shit in" he's saying. It's pretentious, but its aiming for stoic bombast.
The first 5 minutes of blade runner tell us all we need to know, we are shown a text explanation, then a two minute voiceless psychedelic apocalyptic flight into LA sets the tone, then a weird android interrogation that ends badly. We now have the whole scene set : there are new and weird androids on the loose in future LA, they are tougher than anything seen before.

In Strange days the movie starts with a cacophany of bizare exposition, 5 minutes of a high energy robbery "blackjack clip" merely so the movie can start high energy and the protagonist can say "I don't deal blackjack clips". Leaving the over-long garage scene at 7:00 we are treated to a street drive with a voice-over (radio caller) expositioning about "the big 2k, better get down with it", and such. Telling us that trouble is brewing. Then another scene where the protagonist demonstrates (once again) the squid gear for the porn shoot people. NOW finally at 11:00 we get the hooker chase, some actual story. But then from 13:00 to 17:30 we for some reason visit his extended pointless retro wank, nearly five minutes taken to tell us: "I really miss Juliette lewis's tits".
This plot point is interrupted by ... more exposition from the TV anchor speaking in a weird exposition-y way that no TV anchor ever did. Then from 19:00 to 23:00 another pointelss extended scene once again showing him selling his wares to a guy named "Keith".

My point being : in every single scene here there is the exact same energy of a TV movie, high energy, pep, pizazz. It has 90s LA music, 90s LA energy. Juliette Lewis is allowed to sing. Everybody has the same energy.

It's pretty bad that the protagonist can barely use the same accent from scene to scene, but every scene his is talking talking talking. The TV is talking, his friends are all talking. But nobody is saying anything worth saying.

If you are going to act weird, you better have something amazing to say.

People who wish to can "enjoy" the full movie here: http://vimeo.com/57779020

I wonder how well Blade runner would do if it was released today though?

We weren't so spolied for sci fi choice in 1982, maybe we'd be less forgiving of any of this

certainly the whiny bitches on this forum

If Blade Runner were released today I would have been waiting for it my whole life. Few mainstream movies have been such an inspiration to me. It's a Dick story but it's not even a comprehensive Dick movie (though it gets close in theme.) Which is great because I still get to wait for someone to properly pull off a Philip K Dick story on film.

SuburbanThug wrote:If Blade Runner were released today I would have been waiting for it my whole life. Few mainstream movies have been such an inspiration to me.

Ditto, on both accounts.

Keep in mind that Blade Runner did not do well when it was released. The general public was high on E.T., Close Encounters, & Star Wars.

The stature of masterpiece that Blade Runner achieved took a long time. It certainly helped that a variety of director's cuts appeared, & that the horrendous happy ending the studio tacked on was removed. The first of these versions was actually a workprint & not a director's cut, but its sold out screenings demonstrated that the public was ready.

I saw this first workprint release in San Francisco in 1991. Very interesting, tougher, & even more Film Noir in tone. The soundtrack included the familiar Vangelis score, plus music by Jerry Goldsmith for 'Freud' and 'Planet Of The Apes!

Blade Runner Workprint Companion:
http://media.bladezone.com/contents/film/workprint/

Angstrom wrote:In Strange days the movie starts with a cacophany of bizare exposition, 5 minutes of a high energy robbery "blackjack clip" merely so the movie can start high energy and the protagonist can say "I don't deal blackjack clips". Leaving the over-long garage scene at 7:00 we are treated to a street drive with a voice-over (radio caller) expositioning about "the big 2k, better get down with it", and such. Telling us that trouble is brewing. Then another scene where the protagonist demonstrates (once again) the squid gear for the porn shoot people. NOW finally at 11:00 we get the hooker chase, some actual story. But then from 13:00 to 17:30 we for some reason visit his extended pointless retro wank, nearly five minutes taken to tell us: "I really miss Juliette lewis's tits".
This plot point is interrupted by ... more exposition from the TV anchor speaking in a weird exposition-y way that no TV anchor ever did. Then from 19:00 to 23:00 another pointelss extended scene once again showing him selling his wares to a guy named "Keith".

My point being : in every single scene here there is the exact same energy of a TV movie, high energy, pep, pizazz. It has 90s LA music, 90s LA energy. Juliette Lewis is allowed to sing. Everybody has the same energy.

It's pretty bad that the protagonist can barely use the same accent from scene to scene, but every scene his is talking talking talking. The TV is talking, his friends are all talking. But nobody is saying anything worth saying.

Damn, for someone who "couldn't watch" the movie you sure can remember a hell of a lot more of it than I can!

^^^^

Fuck Dick.

What I want to see is someone do Lovecraft properly.

stringtapper wrote:
Damn, for someone who "couldn't watch" the movie you sure can remember a hell of a lot more of it than I can!

yeah, I am cursed with a photographic memory.

Nah, the reality is: both me and the GF watched it about 10 years ago and and vaguely remembered enjoying it but thinking it was a bit daft, but last night I saw that our DVR had auto-recorded it off the TV so we sat down to re-watch it (Sunday night) and were staggered by how bombastically bad it all was, how R Feines seems to be doing a drifting impression of Dennis Pennis. After suffering an hour of laboured scene setting and Feines flailing around we were both souting "GET TO THE fucking POINT!!", and turned it off.

I just got the timings off that Vimeo video after I thought back on how nothing but padding happened for nearly an hour.

An example of how a similar daft acting style can work, with "TV anchor does the exposition" and can wrap up the whole backstory within 3 minutes(rather than 50)

How to do a bombastic Sci-Fi movie and get to the point : Robocop.
http://www.videobash.com/video_show/rob ... vie-438659

LoopStationZebra wrote:Fuck Dick.

What I want to see is someone do Lovecraft properly.

FUCKING THIS.

FFS

Angstrom wrote:How to do a bombastic Sci-Fi movie and get to the point : Robocop.
http://www.videobash.com/video_show/rob ... vie-438659

Well that's Verhoeven. He's about nothing but getting to the point.

Speaking of, I have always been a fan of the first Starship Troopers.

In the Mouth of Madness was great. It's hard to really consider The Cabin In the Woods truly Lovecraftian but it's as close as you're going to get for a while I imagine. Like Dick, Lovecraft doesn't translate well to mainstream filmmaking and has too high of a budget for independent filmmakers. If you haven't read Resumé With Monsters I highly recommend it. Oh, and fuck Lovecraft.