Recent Viewing Part IV

Agreed on Gravity. What a tour de force!

Oh, and the Ender books are very much worth the effort...although to be honest I have to go by my opinion of twenty years ago. Haven't read them since (although I have recently acquired them on my Kindle).

Well, you know, that's just a conservative myth of being complicit with the Romantic elements of National Socialism anyway, so no harm done.

Of course it helps that we all know that this tech really does exist, so you take it for granted that they built everything after the original plans and made Bullock play within a rebuilt ISS and stuff. You simply think it´s real because it´s what we know. We know it exists, so we think it´s a real set. Then you watch the Making of, and Kaboom. So, of course, it IS much more difficult to create effects that have a realism to it when you KNOW the stuff doesn´t exist. I think the one SF thing coming closest was Battlestar Galactica (the new one, of course). Some of their stuff looked extremely real, because of the detail, the way the camera moves, the methods they apply to fake realism, and more. Ender´s Game doesn´t try all that stuff (or at least if it does, it didn´t work). The whole thing looks CGI. For some parts of it, that´s not a bad thing at all, because it helps to sell the story. But still... well, it looks great, just not real.


Have you read the second series of books where the whole thing is been told from a different perspective? I´ve heard that this is even better overall.

Ender's game, i haven't seen the film...is it any good?

I thought that large parts of Gravity were basically a parade of Sandra Bullock-isms. It was entertaining for sure, but basically plot-less. Cinematography is excellent, although all Green Room. The movie essentially felt like a beautifully-shot cinematography commercial, especially if you've seen Cuaron's older much deeper films like CHILDREN OF MEN or Y Tu Mamá También, the emptiness of Gravity's plot was bold in contrast. Whilst Children of Men for instance, was cold and gripping, this was plain awe (technological) and tension during the debris hits and just simple anticipation for the ending after those hits; no stirs, no intense feelings, and 2 cheesy scenes as well (Clooney in soyuz and the ending) which i didn't expect to see at a Cuaron flick.

Gravity's story-line pretty simple, and was evident from the beginning where it was taking us to...all pretty straight-forward. Also the ending, the last scene, with the music and the camera angle from below, of Sandra Bullock, seemed slightly over-the-top cheesy. Didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the film.

Another issue i had with the movie is its score. That maybe, spoiled it even more for me. Where's the emptiness, vastness of space with female vocals and synths? What the magnificent sound design department achieved during the first part of the film (as well as the music which was pretty spot-on during the debris hits as i said earlier) was spoiled by the music afterwards, when Bullock escapes the debris field and until the last scene. So the small appreciation i had for the Oscar Winning score, dropped even more after actually seeing the movie. The only two moments it was actually as gripping as the buzz described it, was the two first major debris hit scenes. The rest was - at times, intruding

Expecting more from a director of Alfonso Cuaron's size next time.

No.

Bear in mind, D, that this is the man who thinks Prometheus was a great film

It's tough to take you seriously, D, when you say stuff like this.





-Erik-

It's fun how you all dismissed my " I'd take Hobbit 1 score over all these though." point. I don't consider Captain america winter soldier a good score (just fun, personally speaking) and neither Smaug. Hobbit 1 is a good score however, puts all these aside (since the bait is always working and we're talking Kardashians again, that is )

edit

That's what I call dialectics!

Whoops, I missed the science-fact part. But Gravity is NOT science fiction.

-Erik-

To Volker you listen.
Much truth he speaks.

Yes, of course it's science fiction. The realistic kind.

A couple of things that you need to remember:

1. GRAVITY is an excellent film! It's science fiction.
2. PROMETHEUS is an excellent film! It's science fiction.
3. ENDER'S GAME is a bad film! It's science fiction.
4. Both HOBBIT scores by Shore are boring and/or grating, but the films are excellent. It's fantasy.

I have spoken.

Well, that's a very broad definition of science fiction.
I think the more generally accepted one is not that it's fiction with a science edge (in that case U-571 could very well be considered science fiction! ) , but rather that science is employed that may or may not be feasible some time in the future. (I.e. the emphasis is on the fiction of science, not the combination of science+fiction as two concepts more or less haphazardly thrown together).

This is why I do not consider Gravity science fiction: because the science is already there. We can do this.
That, as you rightly say, the writers apparently have made some mistakes in no way diminished the fact that the setting is very much now and possible (and to be honest: I find any critic nitpicking on this as silly as car mechanics complaining about cars exploding in James Bond movies)

But I grant you the definition is far from agreed on.
And if you prefer the broader interpretation that's of course perfectly fine.