STEVE JABLONSKY

Well, Pawel's approach, combining academics in general with Michael Bay in particular, was a bit of a rollercoaster, but interesting nonetheless. Everything is connected with everything.

Volker

I went off the tangent, because it's something that has bothered me for some time and got back with a vengenance yesterday. I am just doubting that academic discourse is a credible way of describing the world. I think, for some time, it has been mostly about self-preservation, though I am mostly basing it on humanities.

Sometimes you make it too easy - I need only use the quote function to ridicule things.

(I know, I'm such a meanie.)

Academics and 'artists' can take out all kinds of serious philosophical theories and truths of life in all of its forms and stages out of virtually everything.

Anyway, what's fun to realize with all this discussion, is that now that Zimmer's music is actually that uninteresting and that bad* nobody even bothers to begin all those huge and long Z discussions of the recent past, he's been substituted in film score boards by other continuers of his work, i.e. Z clones. Long live Jablo, the new Zimmer! (btw i really like this score more and more with every new listen although i realize there's nothing virtually intelligent in it )

*when amazing spiderman 2 came out i used to like it on cd and gave it several spins but now, i don't know why, i almost can't stand it; when you hear things a bit more focused and well, as seriously as you can, i really think that together with Silvestri's crappy and awful Cosmos, they're perhaps some of the worst music for film etc i've heard this year

I'm not laughing at that one.

Because you had to do some film analysis as well, right?

What's beautiful is that such awkwardly matched souls seemed destined to keep posting in response to each other.

So I saw the first Transformers again recently, because I remember having liked it. Except some really awkward scenes (no, Mr. Bay, Sam's mother concerned that her son might masturbate in the middle , it's one of Bay's best, with some of the best material being reserved for rather long takes (though the short takes reserved for a very awkward moment of editing when the soldiers are landing in Soccent).

Contrary to what you may think, I think Bay is actually concerned with the Hollywood part of the equation, but usually not exactly the best at it. When he does stuff like Pain and Gain (which I have to see yet, maybe tonight. I hope it won't ruin my good feelings that I had with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is one of the most intelligent blockbusters I've seen in recent years, and yes, I've seen that in preparation for Dawn, I think that film deserves discussion!).

Also, you claim that all the stuff comes from his advertising and music video experience. The thing is that I saw Bad Boys with commentary and he admits that a lot of his style in film comes from that experience, where a lot of the short cuts were informed not by his sense of aesthetics, but by covering the fact that they had a really low budget, even at the time, for something demanding such a scope (he claims that he actually fired his special effects guy after an atrocious piece of practical effect which was blowing the door to Tea Leoni's apartment in one scene, then he decided to get someone much more experienced). Of course, he did claim that the only rule of filmmaking is that you have NO rules whatsoever (which I agree to the point that there is a single limitation - the rules of what you do are informed by the rules of the world you create on screen).

What do you think of that, Thor? Let's just ignore whatever other people say and just discuss.

I was asking precisely about the fact that Bay claims that a lot of his style comes from the low-budget character of Bad Boys and never actually refers to his advertising/music video origins (Ridley Scott on the other hand discusses how his advertising career influenced his approach to features).

What I saw of part three of Transformers improved on what was wrong with part two (aka everything).

Bad Boys shows the trouble in the first sequence, when they're stealing the heroin. Bay states that they basically used all the footage of the respective takes. The sequence has no coherence whatsoever since it starts being a proper action scene.

It does have an element of restraint to itself, which is quite interesting. It's as crazy as he can be sometimes, but then it can have an element of visual restraint, in some moments allowing some performances (Joe Pantoliano!) to shine.

Give me a shout when we get back onto Jablonsky's music.

My review of the new Transformers score album, in the unlikely event anyone's interested in what I think about Jablonsky:

http://www.movie-wave.net/transformers- … xtinction/

There are always exceptions!