11 July, 2007

Broadcast Shows Hot on the Heals of Summer Tent Poles

So, what cinematic feasts will we be gorgeing on for Orange Wednesdays this summer? Having read much of the hype, the only real thing that had me excited about this summer's movie season was Transformers', until I read the reviews.
Nerve delicately phrased:

About forty of its 145 minutes contain both robots and explosions, and those forty minutes comprise some of the most impressive special effects that have ever graced a screen. The Transformers really do look like tangible objects, and they're exciting to watch. But the other hundred-plus minutes aren't really about anything at all.

Even so, poor reviews that describe fluff, effects and no story, may not be enough to keep me away. Most time yes, but for some reason I am intrigued by Transformers. Maybe its nostalgia. I was never into comics as a kid, but cartoons like G.I. Joe and Thundercats and Transformers had me engrossed.

Combined with the praise for the visual effects work might get my £8 from my pocket and into the box office.


I didn't see Spidy 3 and to be honest, am not won over by the current onslaught of franchises (Pirates, Die Hard, Rocky). I image some are credible, but the ideas aren't new. I wont feel like i am discovering something. I will feel like the companies that own the studios are wringing out all the cash they can from a single concept. Maybe that's cynical

Spidy had similar hype to Transformers as to the originality of the effects work, but why combine this with a tired story. This story from a few months ago on Wired, praised the work done to develop the character of the Sandman.

Perhaps directors are getting too consumed with the effects over the story.

But making the villain wasn't easy (nor was it cheap). It all started with director Sam Raimi peering through a microscope to study the molecular structure of sand, and led to two-and-a-half years of visual-effects R&D and a crew of 30 special-effects technicians.

"I had people bring in 12 different kinds of sand -- this is where people think the movie industry is insane -- so I could look at it," says Raimi. "I saw California beach sand, Mojave desert sand. We ended up picking Arizona sand because it looks exactly like ground corncobs. The reason that's important is that when you bury people alive in hundreds and hundreds of pounds of sand, they'll be squished. You need something lightweight like corncobs, so air can get through and the actors and stuntmen won't be crushed."

Raimi conducted "screen tests" on a Culver City soundstage to observe the sands' "behavior." Visual-effects supervisor Scott Stokdyk elaborated: "We shot footage of sand every way we would need it -- thrown up, thrown against blue screen, over black screen. John Frazier, the special-effects supervisor, shot it out of an aero can at a stuntman. Anything we could imagine sand doing in the film, we shot."


Same on Transformers: (viaPopular Mechanics)
Michael Bay's $150 million adaptation of the legendary 1980s cartoon and toy series will include nearly 50 so-called transformations. Hand-rendered metallic uncorkings of real-life cars, trucks and helicopters represented uncharted territory for the gooey-alien experts at ILM, each transformation taking six months to imagine and each re-engineering the way digital Hollywood does computer graphics imagery (CGI).

Perhaps that is whats important for films now. Studio's only need the trailer to be good, the effects to seem unmissable on the big screen to get the cash. The same can't be said for Television which has seen a rise in high production value programming which uses quality visual effects until now exclusive to the big screen. Yet given the necessity for series to establish a following that continues throughout and sustain interesst week in week out which I think supports the fact that high budget TV shows like Lost and 24 have stronger character development and story lines than the majority of the tent pole films produced since the turn of the century. The most clear example of this is Heroes. One of the few breakout shows of last year. The soon to air on BBC2 show is brilliant. Top effects and good solid story telling. Perhaps a recent Wired article about show creator Tim Kring can shed some light on the winning formula. It starts...

Tim Kring doesn't know Magneto from Wolverine. You'd never know it from watching Heroes, his hit show about everyday people with extraordinary powers.

Kring creates balance in the show as the top tier in Production he fulfills the need to bring the supernatural back down to earth.
Kring's approach was counterintuitive to someone from a comics background, says Greg Beeman, another Smallville vet who came to Heroes as an executive producer. "I'd think, 'We need an ice guy! We need a fire guy! We need a guy who shoots rays out of his eyes!'" Beeman says. "Tim thought in terms of distinct characters." He started with a character's personal struggles and predicaments and assigned special abilities to suit. A harried single mom gets superstrength. A clock-watching Dilbert type learns to control time. A prison escapee is suddenly able to walk through walls. And when Kring's protagonists develop their powers, they don't strap on spandex and capes - they grapple with these strange developments like believable human beings.

I had thought a good exclusion to this argument of TV taking over film in terms of quality, might be Harry Potter, but as Heroes likens to cinema in quality and effects, Harry Potter has 7 features to ensure they get bums on seats for. 14 hours of "programming" of which the studio needs to inspire people to pay for. This must be inspiring Universal to look after story quality and character development. Anne Thompson's new Blog has an early review of the latest installment and concurs.

I suspect that this Harry Potter installment may experience a slight boxoffice dip. But the one I'd be worried about, if I were Warners, is the next one. Yates will be back; he did just fine with Order of the Phoenix. I have no problem with the darker, scarier Potter. That's where it has to go. But in movie terms, it does feel like we're stretching this out over a very long haul.
Finally, I have been meaning to mention a Past Deadine article from back in Feburary titled; Television -- Better Than the Movies? Deal With It? In it, Ray Richmond cites a Newsweek article tracking the evolution of TV, the HBO effect and growth in film stars eager to get seen on the small screen, an action which used to signify the steep slope of a career in decline.

Short summary; I am more excited about season premiers than summer films and I think that trend is not likely to change. What keeps me going to the cinema are the gems that TV has yet to produce, for me, the most recent example was Volver as close to a perfect film as I have every seen.

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