Even though they aren’t explicitly movie-related, I love drawing comics about the 4th of July because I love making fun of the absurdity of Americans.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my country and I understand the significance of the holiday. But as Americans, we have a certain proclivity of abstracting holidays and assigning new meanings to them.
President’s Day has become more about buying cheap linens at JC Penny’s then celebrating George Washington or Abe Lincoln. Memorial Day has become more commonly recognized as the official kick-off of summer rather than a solemn remembrance of those in the Armed Forces. Hell, in this country, the Super Bowl is practically a holiday! The 4th of July has basically become an excuse to celebrate our country by means of blowing up a small chunk of it.
At any rate, I’m cutting this blog short because I was up WAAAAY too late applying effects to today’s comic and my mind is shot. I had planned on posting a review of Public Enemies (which I saw on Wednesday), but that will have to wait.
To tide you over, I’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version – The movie is surprisingly long at 2 and a half hours and it isn’t traditional popcorn fare. If you’re a fan of Johnny Depp, you’ll love the movie. He owns it and pretty much 80% of it features him in some context. It makes sense to me now why Christian Bale wasn’t promoted more in the advertising and trailers. He’s barely in this movie. Similar to how Michael Mann yanked us around in Heat, Depp and Bale have only one scene together and it’s about 2 minutes long. So if you were looking forward to Bale going head-to-head with Depp like he did with Hugh Jackman in The Prestige, prepare to be disappointed.
I have a little bit more to say about the supporting performances and the interesting gangland-era personalities that were mixed into the story. Oh, and the “controversy” of Mann shooting the film with digital video. But I’ll leave that for later. Right now, I have to go to bed. Gotta rest up for Saturday so I can put a crater in my backyard with high explosives!
Everyone in America, enjoy the holiday. For Theater Hopper readers elsewhere in the world, have a great weekend!
Talk to you soon!
I call it the Orv-Red 400!
C'mon, Tom. There's NO WAY that's gonna...
...work.
Ah, the buttery taste of freedom
And now I want popcorn..
I wonder if anyone has actually tried to do that.. it wouldn’t surprise me.
I had a lot of issues with how it was shot. See to me because of the jerky movements and the unrefined video, everything looked very set-y to me like I could tell it was on a set. Rarely when I’m watching a movie can I say “that looks like a set” but that’s all I could think through this one. It also gives you a lot of time to hink cuz itt’s so long. They could have cut a lot down and had it still work. As for the story, I liked it but then again I had never heard the story of John Dillinger. The person I saw the movie with thought it was boring cuz he thought it was a worn out story.
Actually, Mythbusters just had an episode where they tried to replicate the popcorn-with-lasers of “Real Genius.” They also tried popping corn with explosives, which didn’t really work, sadly.
totalmoviefreak,
I’m not disputing your interpretation of the camera work but Michael Mann almost never uses sets, preferring location shooting almost exclusively. The closet thing to a set in a Mann movie would be a set dressed location.
Heat for example had a record 95 shooting locations in LA.
The digital video of the movie did throw me a bit, since at times it almost seemed like a student film or TV show (on the soap opera channel. Don’t know why, they always shoot their shows differently than normal TV shows) than a feature film. Plus, the sound was weird at places, cutting n and out, getting louder and softer depending on where the camera was situated (may have been a problem with our theater, though, and not the movie).
Still, I liked it. Good performances from everyone, and Mann still knows how to shoot a damned entertaining gunfight.
Dragon,
I experienced the exact same audio problems you described in your theater. I found it jarring.
I found it flat, a cat-and-mouse game where the mouse is going about his own business. The problem there is that the movie focused on said mouse. A big deal is made about the specialists from Texas coming in off the train, and then the story cuts away from the feds for 30 minutes. Until the torture scene much later you get no feel for why these guys were brought in, aside from three folks making rookie mistakes in the first bust.
I just couldn’t bring myself to care about anybody in the movie.
I thought the script was all over the place. Some good scenes, but it needed a much tighter screenplay.
I didn’t think it was terrible or anything, but it needed work and could have been much shorter.
i work as projectionist, and we constantly got complaints about inconsistent sound with Public Enemies. Sort of glad to know that it is more to do with the print than with our sound racks and such.
The camera and sound had me shaken throughout. The pounding gunshots and the unsteady camera left me feeling somewhat giddy. Also, why were there so many blatant historical inaccuracies? I mean, I understand it’s just a movie, but Baby Face Nelson didn’t die at the Little Bohemia Lodge. In fact, both Nelson and Pretty Boy Floyd died a year after Dillinger. When it’s little things, it doesn’t bother me, but writers and directors shouldn’t change the flow of time just to suit their movie. . .unless of course it’s about time travel.
so wait tom.
you say ill be disappointed because they only share one scene together. is this because its only the one scene. or was the scene itself really bad and anti-climatic.
the word of mouth that has travelled into my head seems to be that this movie is kinda a let down.
so i think ill wait to rent/download
The scene itself wasn’t anything to write home about.
I think it’s just a wasted opportunity not to put these two together on screen as often as possible.