Films and trailers
Jul. 4th, 2005 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peck72Anna and I went to see Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" on Saturday and
I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by it. I had gone thinking
that it would just be another 'American Disaster Movie" TM, (a la Independance Day or The Day After Tomorrow ) with a couple of HG Wells 'tributes' thrown in.
I was quite wrong. True, it isn't a faithfull remake of the book (which I would like to see, although the main candidate for this seems as though it may not live up to hopes) but then War of the Worlds has been adapted so many times in different ways that this is easily forgivable. But it does have all the necesary details and most of all, the feel of the original book. This is a film about the human race having it's head handed to it on a plate in no uncertain terms and there being nothing that can be done about it. The design of the film is good as well. The tripods are pretty much perfect. They look, move and sound incredibly impressive. Sure, Jeff Wayne's Ulllloooo soundeffect (or however you spell it) would have just capped it all but it was good to have a different sound to them. I was impressed that they chose to use Wells original ending too. I had heard rumours that they had an original ending to it and this was a source of my misgivings regarding the whole project. If you put the fate of humanity back in the hands of mankind then you ruin the point of the story (to my mind anyway), so I am glad that they left well enough alone.Of course it wasn't perfect but the niggles I have are mostly rather petty. Such as Morgan Freeman's narration at the start and finish just not matching up to Richard Burton, never mind Orson Welles. The scene of the red weed around the house looked really like a sound stage (this may have been part of the tribute to the 1954 version but it still looked poor). Tom Cruise getting to bag his tripod - this bugged me even though I really should have seen it coming before I went into the cinema.The one bigger niggle though is why, oh why did Spielberg do away with the idea of the pods crashing to earth? If the alien machines have been here for the thousands or millions of years speculated then why have the aliens waited till now to come back to them? Why havn't they been ruling the earth for millenia already? If they have already been here (to bury the machines), how come the bacteria kills them this time? I can see why he didn't like the martians idea. We know a lot more about Mars now and the speculation about life there has reduced itself to "well, there may be microbes", so I can see that wasn't going to wash but how about arriving in a meteor storm? I don't know but please if anyone has any answers or speculations let me know. If it is blindingly obvious then I will happily eat humble pie just to be done with this niggle ;)
Anyway, on the whole, a worthy 8 out of 10.
That was film and so here comes the trailer. Mirrormask is a film by Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman and looks to be absolutely incredible. This snippet isn't a trailer but a short scene from the film. I really can't wait for this film to be released.
This, along with Tim Burtons Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, mean that this year should be a good one for surreal cult films.
I was going to add more, but time is once more against me. So once more, adieu.
I was quite wrong. True, it isn't a faithfull remake of the book (which I would like to see, although the main candidate for this seems as though it may not live up to hopes) but then War of the Worlds has been adapted so many times in different ways that this is easily forgivable. But it does have all the necesary details and most of all, the feel of the original book. This is a film about the human race having it's head handed to it on a plate in no uncertain terms and there being nothing that can be done about it. The design of the film is good as well. The tripods are pretty much perfect. They look, move and sound incredibly impressive. Sure, Jeff Wayne's Ulllloooo soundeffect (or however you spell it) would have just capped it all but it was good to have a different sound to them. I was impressed that they chose to use Wells original ending too. I had heard rumours that they had an original ending to it and this was a source of my misgivings regarding the whole project. If you put the fate of humanity back in the hands of mankind then you ruin the point of the story (to my mind anyway), so I am glad that they left well enough alone.Of course it wasn't perfect but the niggles I have are mostly rather petty. Such as Morgan Freeman's narration at the start and finish just not matching up to Richard Burton, never mind Orson Welles. The scene of the red weed around the house looked really like a sound stage (this may have been part of the tribute to the 1954 version but it still looked poor). Tom Cruise getting to bag his tripod - this bugged me even though I really should have seen it coming before I went into the cinema.The one bigger niggle though is why, oh why did Spielberg do away with the idea of the pods crashing to earth? If the alien machines have been here for the thousands or millions of years speculated then why have the aliens waited till now to come back to them? Why havn't they been ruling the earth for millenia already? If they have already been here (to bury the machines), how come the bacteria kills them this time? I can see why he didn't like the martians idea. We know a lot more about Mars now and the speculation about life there has reduced itself to "well, there may be microbes", so I can see that wasn't going to wash but how about arriving in a meteor storm? I don't know but please if anyone has any answers or speculations let me know. If it is blindingly obvious then I will happily eat humble pie just to be done with this niggle ;)
Anyway, on the whole, a worthy 8 out of 10.
That was film and so here comes the trailer. Mirrormask is a film by Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman and looks to be absolutely incredible. This snippet isn't a trailer but a short scene from the film. I really can't wait for this film to be released.
This, along with Tim Burtons Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, mean that this year should be a good one for surreal cult films.
I was going to add more, but time is once more against me. So once more, adieu.
