Laborious
Man, three whole days and the weekend still flew by. Mostly this was due to filming, as we were putting together some sketches for the website. So large chunks of both Saturday and Monday were taken up with that. (Thanks to Trumbo, Liz, Jenni, Laurel, and Amy, who voluteered their time to appear in the sketches.) The hour of footage we shot with Trumbo is like a Master Class on how we are not adept at Time Management. The take we're most likely to use is about ten minutes into the many, many takes we did. Also, something has gone horribly wrong in my left shoulder, possibly due to the many, many "WHAT?" takes we did. Comedy will be the death of me.
I saw not one but two movies this weekend: Transporter 2 and The Constant Gardener. Transporter 2 is much like Transporter 1, except it has a ridiculously hot woman firing machine guns while wearing lingerie. Usually I'm not into the rail-thin blonde types, but damn, that woman is HOT. Overheard at the screening: "Has anyone actually seen the first one?" It really helps if you have. There's quite a bit of riffing on the first movie's bits.
The Constant Gardener is pretty good, well-acted and directed, but it has its problems. There's a bit too much liberal hand-wringing for my tastes, and the plot basically amounts to "Ralph Fiennes talks to someone who immediately gives up all their information and points him to the next someone." Think Man on Fire without the torture. And why would you flashback to stuff twice? Was there really nothing else that could have been revealed about their relationship that you had to show us footage we had already seen? Still, it's a very watchable movie. Very engrossing while I was experiencing it, but the problems started showing up in my mind once I left the theater.
There was also quite a bit of drinking done this weekend, but no fun stories came out of it.
I saw not one but two movies this weekend: Transporter 2 and The Constant Gardener. Transporter 2 is much like Transporter 1, except it has a ridiculously hot woman firing machine guns while wearing lingerie. Usually I'm not into the rail-thin blonde types, but damn, that woman is HOT. Overheard at the screening: "Has anyone actually seen the first one?" It really helps if you have. There's quite a bit of riffing on the first movie's bits.
The Constant Gardener is pretty good, well-acted and directed, but it has its problems. There's a bit too much liberal hand-wringing for my tastes, and the plot basically amounts to "Ralph Fiennes talks to someone who immediately gives up all their information and points him to the next someone." Think Man on Fire without the torture. And why would you flashback to stuff twice? Was there really nothing else that could have been revealed about their relationship that you had to show us footage we had already seen? Still, it's a very watchable movie. Very engrossing while I was experiencing it, but the problems started showing up in my mind once I left the theater.
There was also quite a bit of drinking done this weekend, but no fun stories came out of it.
posted by Jeff at 9:55 AM
3 Comments:
Yeah, I know
Whoa, sorry. I was distracted from completing that last post by the brand new Word Verification Feature that I apparently need to clear each time I wish to reply on Blogspot. I'm glad they've finally tightened up security at this place. Our posts were VULNERABLE!
Anyway, yeah, I know. Those repeat flashbacks towards the end were liking watching an episode of Noir. I think the explanation lies in the fact that, if I remember Fernando Meirelles's LA Weekly interview correctly, the film was originally scripted to run much more chronologically, with the opening framing device simply being Ralph Fiennes arriving at the lake with the gun, waiting for the men to come and kill him. This remained the intended structure right through filming, and only during the editing process was the decision made to open the film with the discovery of Tessa's murder. So the way in which the semi-Impressionist, unfolding flashback structure parallels Fiennes's detective work was a post-production invention.
This also explains why, as you pointed out, that memory narrative drops out halfway through the movie, when we've apparently "caught up with the present." Since they hadn't conceived the structure at an earlier point in making the movie, they hadn't shot enough of that pre-murder material to stretch the flashbacks into a satisfying narrative long enough to last until Justin Quayle solves the whole mystery. Which is a shame, because it's those flashbacks that make the first half of the movie so much more engaging than the second half.
It now occurs to me that intrepid spammers must have figured out a way to post junkmail responses to individual blogs. That's why we have to do Word Verification. Because robots can't read squiggly letters.
I can't wait until ten years from now when your blog starts asking me what I would do if I found a turtle on its back in the middle of the road!
Whoa, nice work spoiling the movie, Frank!
Also, you are totally correct as to why I have enabled word verification. I received several comments yesterday, and they were all ads. Booo! Why must capitalism ruin everything?
That's fascinating about the editing, and explains a lot. It does not, however, make the movie better.
"Anyway, yeah, I know. Those repeat flashbacks towards the end were liking watching an episode of Noir."
Ha! Oh, Noir. The series that thinks it's so nice, it makes you watch it thrice!
Whoa, that was labored. You know what I mean, though.
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