Random musings 3.

Just some random thoughts about popular movies for which I'm too lazy to write whole articles around.

Pixel art: Jacky Brown

Here is my first, ever, attempt at pixel art. I guess it's like a midlife-crisis everybody has a go at it at some point.  Now it took me the entirety of The great escape to complete this (I work during my movies). But I kinda like the result. So enjoy. More attempts are on the way in due time.

Why didn't I open a Deviantart-account or something? Because I don't want to be a Picasso next to a Rembrandt.

Blackhat

I will lose any discussion with Michael Mann fan(boy)s. Each and every single one of his movies are well shot, greatly edited and with a cinematographic dream of a color pallet.

However, his later movies have been lacking a bit on script (and Mann has never been the greatest actor director - combine this with the fact that he prefers alpha-male protagonists).

As I said often before I'm a script junkie. I can appreciate visual movies like Man with a movie camera (to name the classic) but the moment there is even the smallest hint of a story my primary focus goes to the script.

So -considering Mann's later efforts- I see a badly written movie with great visuals instead of a great (visual) movie with a badly written script (Keep in mind Mann writes most of his own movies -not always but often).

Now I can't wait for Mann to get back with a greatly written script because he has the visual side of directing down to a key. I just bothers me that whenever Mann's work is discussed you either have to completely fall in love with the visual side and ignore the script or vice versa. Can't we do both? Accept that Blackhat (for instance) was a good looking movie but not very well written?

Silent Hill movie documentary

Videogame movies are hard. Like the comic book movies before Marvel there appears to be a curse on the material. Until now videogames haven't been adapted in a universal satisfactory way. In laments terms: most videogame movies are rather terrible. But, thankfully there are a few gems in there. The big one is Mortal Kombat. Cheezy fun, highly quotable and: fights. The second on is without a doubt Silent Hill (the first one, Silent Hill: Revelation shouldn't/ doesn't exist).

I love the first three games to bits (the fourth one is very okay). So I'm definitely biased when I say that I love the movie as well. But I do. The atmosphere is perfectly keyed to the game. The story is a more simplified version of the game -but that's fine.

I think the only problem with this movie comes from the change of the main character from male to female. It's understandable; and it works in the movie. But -as the story goes- since the original script didn't include any male characters, and therefore the producers demanded/asked to include the male character played by Sean Bean, the story becomes unbalanced. Now we have a second storyline that doesn't lead anywhere. A storyline that takes the viewer away from the main plot. But, again, my love for the games could easily survive that.

Now recently I found this behind-the-scenes documentary. Usually I loathe these very positive 'selling documentaries' but this one is actually quite interesting. If you are a movie buff I advise you to spent an hour watching this. But be advised that you watch the movie first since a lot of stuff is spoiled of course. 

Interesting to note here, by the way, that throughout this documentary there is no footage shown from the original game. Something about the rights? 

If you love Silent Hill 3 by the way you should watch this video too.