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I've been going to the cinema a bit more recently; which isn't to say very much. After Stormbreaker with Ceollass a few weeks ago, on Sunday I ventured for the first time to see a commercial release at an IMAX cinema, in this case Superman Returns, with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gervase_fen. Superman Returns is not a great film or even a great blockbuster film. It is a bit too episodic, with the thematic and plot threads not being drawn together until very late in its long running time. As Gervase pointed out, Kate Bosworth is visibly too young to play Lois Lane, with whom Clark Kent has worked for a good few years before Superman disappeared - in the movie's backstory - to investigate the ruins of Krypton. There's perhaps a bit too much devotional imagery and weighty discussion of Superman as the world's saviour; evidently no trowel is too heavy for director and co-writer Bryan Singer. Perhaps what lingers most are the scenes early in the film between the indomitable Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent, and Brandon Routh as the newly-returned Clark; and most of all the credits sequence, which lovingly recreates the look and tone of the Christopher Reeve opening titles with the benefit of 2006 technology. Comparison between Routh and Reeve is unfair as different things are being asked of them: Reeve was asked to create a part whereas Routh is being asked to echo Reeve's performance, which he does better as Clark Kent than as Superman; apparently, this is what cast him.
IMAX's 3D process was applied to about twenty minutes of the film, and was at its most effective in the early sequences on the farm, including a flashback sequence where the young Clark Kent is learning to jump and eventually (by accident) fly.
Tonight saw me at the Phoenix in Oxford, with Ceollass and a couple of other lexicographers, to watch A Scanner Darkly. I don't know Philip K Dick's novel, but I enjoyed this film, which appeals to all my cynicism about corporate power, and the desperate means by which right is pursued in a world where the moral compass points have been taken down. Those who know rotoscoping, like me, from Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings will see that technique has moved on since the late 1970s and the realisation of the performers' likenesses is appropriately psychedelic in a degraded sort of way.
gervase_fen. Superman Returns is not a great film or even a great blockbuster film. It is a bit too episodic, with the thematic and plot threads not being drawn together until very late in its long running time. As Gervase pointed out, Kate Bosworth is visibly too young to play Lois Lane, with whom Clark Kent has worked for a good few years before Superman disappeared - in the movie's backstory - to investigate the ruins of Krypton. There's perhaps a bit too much devotional imagery and weighty discussion of Superman as the world's saviour; evidently no trowel is too heavy for director and co-writer Bryan Singer. Perhaps what lingers most are the scenes early in the film between the indomitable Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent, and Brandon Routh as the newly-returned Clark; and most of all the credits sequence, which lovingly recreates the look and tone of the Christopher Reeve opening titles with the benefit of 2006 technology. Comparison between Routh and Reeve is unfair as different things are being asked of them: Reeve was asked to create a part whereas Routh is being asked to echo Reeve's performance, which he does better as Clark Kent than as Superman; apparently, this is what cast him.IMAX's 3D process was applied to about twenty minutes of the film, and was at its most effective in the early sequences on the farm, including a flashback sequence where the young Clark Kent is learning to jump and eventually (by accident) fly.
Tonight saw me at the Phoenix in Oxford, with Ceollass and a couple of other lexicographers, to watch A Scanner Darkly. I don't know Philip K Dick's novel, but I enjoyed this film, which appeals to all my cynicism about corporate power, and the desperate means by which right is pursued in a world where the moral compass points have been taken down. Those who know rotoscoping, like me, from Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings will see that technique has moved on since the late 1970s and the realisation of the performers' likenesses is appropriately psychedelic in a degraded sort of way.