The New Cinema and Movie Thread

[majestic]

59 minutes ago, Hurlshort said:

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. You didn't like the scene, I get that.

I typed up half a paragraph about the use of CGI in films, but then Agent Smith asked my why I persist, and I realized that I should just chose not to. Suffice it to say that this sort of weightless fake CGI hurts my personal suspension of disbelief more than an alien big game hunter stalking humans for fun. The bear is only one part of the film, but certainly the most egregious - there's of course the fake snake too, the fake wolf and the fake cougar, and they all have the same problem.

Very, very deep uncanny vally. Everything about these scenes makes my brain scream at me.

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I still don't want a real Grizzly Bear being forced to do stunts for a 30-second action sequence. 

Like @Bartimaeus suggested, if that is the result, one might as well just drop the action sequence entirely.

9 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

ps we read somewheres prey protagonist is 'sposed comanche, so if that ain't true, then ignore everything we posted.

No, you're right, they're all supposed to be Comanche. Great, now the archery doesn't just look wonky, now I know it is wonky. No idea what happened there, but from the video you posted and looking at a follow up, it looks like the producers took a peek at Ishi archery and added some Mediterranean flavor to it. Well, or they watched too much Avatar like you said.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Predator punching CGI bear is probably my laugh out loud unintentionally funny moment in film for 2022.

What follows isn't so bad either, the Predator drags a thousand pounds of almost weightless bear through a beaver dam. Yeah, sorry, I guess sometimes close enough just isn't good enough.

Choose your fighter: Man in a Bear Suit or Jack from David Lynch's What Did Jack Do? playing every single animal.

3 minutes ago, majestic said:

No idea what happened there

They hired some Canadian cop to teach the cast iirc.

[Lexx]

Man, people sure love to nitpick that movie. On the plus side, I guess that means generally people really liked it, because if they wouldn't, they wouldn't be talking about it for so long.

[Hurlshort]

I guess my childhood of going to Chuck E Cheese and being entertained by frightening animatronix has made me less concerned about the uncanny valley. 

But really, I enjoyed the storytelling aspect of the animals in Prey. The snake and the mouse, the wolf and the rabbit, the mountain lion and the...tree? The bear and the protagonist. The shifting from Predator to Prey was what I enjoyed.

Also, I just watched Predator 2, which was ridiculous, so lets not get too nitpicky about bowstrings and resin or whatever.

[ShadySands]

I liked Prey a lot and pretty much none of the issues people mention bothered me at all. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it's one of the better movies I've seen recently.

[uuuhhii]

day shift

typical netflix start strong ending rush sequel setting movie

mostly fun

[Maedhros]

Everything Everywhere All at Once. Great film that I think a lot of people will miss out on sadly. Do yourself a favour and watch it.

[Gromnir]

14 hours ago, majestic said:

 

No, you're right, they're all supposed to be Comanche. Great, now the archery doesn't just look wonky, now I know it is wonky. No idea what happened there, but from the video you posted and looking at a follow up, it looks like the producers took a peek at Ishi archery and added some Mediterranean flavor to it. Well, or they watched too much Avatar like you said.

 

we mentioned the archery weirdness were minor, but am also suggesting some folks is being over dismissive... save for hurlshot who has shown time and again he prefers movie combats to be as campy and improbable as possible. if prey were shaolin 'stead o' comanche, and a monastery were attacked by a predator, how many here would be nitpicking if the monks were using wwf moves?  maybe you is a big fan o' wwf wrestling, but why use shaolin if you got the monks defeating the predator with leap from rope piledrivers and back o' the head blows with folding metal chairs? is a scifi movie with aliens and cgi bears, and there is already a history o' wwf guys in predator movies, so why not have wwf style fighting take out a predator you nitpickers? *shrug* even so, if you are gonna do wwf to defeat the space hunter, then why use a shaolin monastery as the setting? so am asking again, why comanche? coulda' invented a north american indian tribe, or even set the movie on pandora or any other invented alien world. why make comanche and then do weird archery which is most assured not comanche? did weird archery make the movie better? if not, then why? 

ishi btw weren't anywhere near as wacky as what prey comanche is doing. ishi used a long bow, drew up to his chin and shot from right side o' the bow, which would be problematic while mounted but didn't look anywhere near as awkward as what we see in pictures from prey with the comanche doing that basswakwards na'vi draw thing.

the stoopid archery in prey is not what is preventing us from seeing the movie, and even we described as a minor issue, but am suspecting more people is capable o' easy overlooking 'cause they don't realize how wonky is the prey comanche archers. do a 17th century samurai v predator film and have the samurai using modern olympic style epee fencing in spite o' wielding a katana... and force the samurai to do the fencing with a weird backhand grip. somebody would pick nits, no?

HA! Good Fun!

[LadyCrimson]

I'm one of those few ppl on the internet that isn't all that enamored of Predator even as an action film. Both hubby and I are "it's ... all right. Has moments." But we didn't see it as kids (mid-late 20's maybe) and have no nostalgia. I like action movies but for some reason Predator (the alien itself and the film) didn't do it for me. Kinda how I feel about all the Rambo stuff too, including First Blood.

And I still liked Adrian Brody in that one film. The film itself wasn't special but for some reason I really liked Brody in it - it wasn't his usual type of role and I liked him better outside of his typical box. Also, I liked that it wasn't set on Earth.

The less said about Predator 2 the better. The only reason I saw it was Danny Glover was in it and I remember wondering why he'd taken the role.

I suppose I'll see Prey someday, out of curiosity, tho.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

15 hours ago, Lexx said:

Man, people sure love to nitpick that movie. On the plus side, I guess that means generally people really liked it, because if they wouldn't, they wouldn't be talking about it for so long.

Don't get me wrong, I throughly enjoyed Prey despite the uncanny valley cgi animals, and unlike some of my fellow haters I think the animals were necessary for this story. Still, this is a videogame forum so nitpicking is to be expected.

15 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I guess my childhood of going to Chuck E Cheese and being entertained by frightening animatronix has made me less concerned about the uncanny valley. 

Willy's Wonderland is the movie for you then. Nic Cage vs evil animatronics.

[Hurlshort]

53 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

we mentioned the archery weirdness were minor, but am also suggesting some folks is being over dismissive... save for hurlshot who has shown time and again he prefers movie combats to be as campy and improbable as possible.

[kirottu]

41 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

And I still liked Adrian Brody in that one film. The film itself wasn't special but for some reason I really liked Brody in it - it wasn't his usual type of role and I liked him better outside of his typical box. Also, I liked that it wasn't set on Earth.

The less said about Predator 2 the better. The only reason I saw it was Danny Glover was in it and I remember wondering why he'd taken the role.

The main reason why I always loved Reign of Fire is because I had only seen Matthew McConaughey being the romantic lead, so I totally understand liking Adrian Brody in Predators. But Predator 2 is a good movie and Danny Glover probably took the role, because he got to be the badass in a badass movie.

Edited August 13, 2022 by kirottu

[ShadySands]

2 hours ago, Gromnir said:

ishi btw weren't anywhere near as wacky as what prey comanche is doing. ishi used a long bow, drew up to his chin and shot from right side o' the bow, which would be problematic while mounted but didn't look anywhere near as awkward as what we see in pictures from prey with the comanche doing that basswakwards na'vi draw thing.

the stoopid archery in prey is not what is preventing us from seeing the movie, and even we described as a minor issue, but am suspecting more people is capable o' easy overlooking 'cause they don't realize how wonky is the prey comanche archers. do a 17th century samurai v predator film and have the samurai using modern olympic style epee fencing in spite o' wielding a katana... and force the samurai to do the fencing with a weird backhand grip. somebody would pick nits, no?

Ignorance is definitely bliss when it comes to movie inaccuracies. Thankfully, there isn't much archery in the movie and none of it is mounted, though it does look a little strange even without knowing it's completely wrong.

As for the CGI, a lot of it does not look that good but like KP I think that the animals being there works better for the story they're trying to tell.  

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

22 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

As for the CGI, a lot of it does not look that good but like KP I think that the animals being there works better for the story they're trying to tell.  

I'm trying to figure out how it would work without the animals and all I'm coming up with is just implying it via trophies the predator has while having had him moving up to hunting the French trappers by the start of the film. On the whole, I think that would have made a worse movie than the CGI animals and Naru still needs the encounter with the lion to make the story work. I'm less concerned with accuracy (especially in a movie featuring an intergalactic 18-year old trophy hunter) and more concerned with how the movie works, and it does despite the wonky archery or cgi animals.

[Bartimaeus]

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Wes Anderson. It's a shot-for-shot live action remake of his Mr. Fantastic Fox. Well...okay, it's not at all, but it somehow completely feels like it. After having seen three of his films that all felt like watching the same exact movie, I think I now understand what RLM meant when they said if you've seen one Wes Anderson film, you've seen them all. And if you love it, that's great...but I only just kind of liked Mr. Fantastic Fox and Isle of Dogs, so I think I've really got my fill.

[Lexx]

Heh, you should check out Paddington (and Paddington 2, which is even better) if you haven't yet. I saw someone comment on it once "it's like a Wes Anderson movie, but without the pretentiousness" - I think that fits quite well.

[Bartimaeus]

36 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Heh, you should check out Paddington (and Paddington 2, which is even better) if you haven't yet. I saw someone comment on it once "it's like a Wes Anderson movie, but without the pretentiousness" - I think that fits quite well.

Seemingly everyone that's ever watched the Paddington movies says they're wonderful, so I suppose I should check them out sometime. But I don't think I'd necessarily call Wes Anderson's films pretentious, but rather...the ones I've seen almost feel like children's movies, but for adults? I don't even necessarily mean that in a bad way. It's just that...it's always like the most one-note characters taken to such a cartoonish extreme, scenes and plot that directly tell you everything that's happening all of the time and never leave you wondering about or trying to figure out anything, fast and witty humor that comes at the expense of grounding and its characters, the same exact visual style choices over and over... I watch them and they're kind of funny and they look nice enough, but that's all there is to them, and I feel...insatiated. Like when you're starving for protein and all you've got are tasty but very empty sugars and carbs - no matter how many thousands of calories you have of the latter, you're still ravenously hungry for the protein. Wes Anderson films don't have any protein...and one fried egg is infinitely more filling than all of the donuts in the world, so it just doesn't quite do it for me.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Disney's blurays/HD streams for their classic films are generally of very ill-repute for the techniques used to make them look contemporary (i.e. "clean" and digital) and it makes me the big mad. And no, I'm not ever going to stop talking about it when I see egregious examples of it, .

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

43 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Disney's blurays/HD streams for their classic films are generally of very ill-repute for the techniques used to make them look contemporary (i.e. "clean" and digital) and it makes me the big mad. And no, I'm not ever going to stop talking about it when I see egregious examples of it, .

Removing grain is one thing, but why the hell would they erase the creases in her dress?

[Bartimaeus]

54 minutes ago, KP From Another World said:

Removing grain is one thing, but why the hell would they erase the creases in her dress?

It almost certainly wasn't intended, it's just a necessary artifact of the "digitalization" process. Look at the shiny stars on her dress, the fine white outline on the hem, the dark outlines between distinct objects...and how much of all of that was eliminated as well. Or how weirdly bulgy her eyes and lips got. Trying to squash noise into flat gradients for this kind of "restored" look necessitates that certain...sacrifices are made in terms of fine detail, and it's not unique to Disney's noise elimination process even if the result here seems particularly offensive. Manually restoring it is possible, but requires both a keen eye and an insane amount of manual work for little reward - the vast majority of people will not notice or care. And then there are people like me, who endlessly harp on noise reduction for old prints like these and the unavoidable damage it does...

Edited August 19, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

6 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

It almost certainly wasn't intended, it's just an artifact of the "digitalization" process. Look at the sparkly/shiny stars on her dress and how much of that was eliminated as well, or how weirdly bulgy her eyes got. Trying to squash noise into flat gradients for this kind of "restored" look necessitates that certain...sacrifices are made in terms of detail. Manually restoring it is possible, but requires both a keen eye and an insane amount of manual work for little reward - the vast majority of people will not notice or care.

Intended or no, it seems like something they would at least try to correct. But I guess when the house of mouse is paying digital artists peanuts they don't have much reason to care about the quality.

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, KP From Another World said:

Intended or no, it seems like something they would at least try to correct. But I guess when the house of mouse is paying digital artists peanuts they don't have much reason to care about the quality.

Unfortunately, I've seen enough of Disney's other blurays to know that the phenomenon is not unique to Cinderella. Noise reduction is an ugly process that systematically leaves casualties in its wake, and whatever studio responsible for these sorts of modern HD re-releases is usually the only thing that we get for a given film - for better or for worse, and clearly Cinderella here got the "for worse" end of the stick. Previously, I've made mention of fans doing a terrible smorgasbord of filters to quality blurays in an attempt to simulate something like what Disney does...but that's a much better situation than the original bluray starting off like that - not possible to restore detail that isn't there.

[Gorgon]

On 8/12/2022 at 11:48 PM, majestic said:

I typed up half a paragraph about the use of CGI in films, but then Agent Smith asked my why I persist, and I realized that I should just chose not to. Suffice it to say that this sort of weightless fake CGI hurts my personal suspension of disbelief more than an alien big game hunter stalking humans for fun. The bear is only one part of the film, but certainly the most egregious - there's of course the fake snake too, the fake wolf and the fake cougar, and they all have the same problem.

Very, very deep uncanny vally. Everything about these scenes makes my brain scream at me.

Like @Bartimaeus suggested, if that is the result, one might as well just drop the action sequence entirely.

No, you're right, they're all supposed to be Comanche. Great, now the archery doesn't just look wonky, now I know it is wonky. No idea what happened there, but from the video you posted and looking at a follow up, it looks like the producers took a peek at Ishi archery and added some Mediterranean flavor to it. Well, or they watched too much Avatar like you said.

 

the boomerang tomahawk bothered me the most, but yeah they could have sprung for a real bear. It's big and can't really afford to feel like it has no weight to it. 

This is what cinema is now though, the days of spending millions on sets and extras are gone, it's all CGI because of the savings. Think about that for a minute. the best cinematography you will ever see, has already been made in the pre CGI era, and will never be seen again. 

Depressing. 

[majestic]

11 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

the boomerang tomahawk bothered me the most, but yeah they could have sprung for a real bear. It's big and can't really afford to feel like it has no weight to it. 

This is what cinema is now though, the days of spending millions on sets and extras are gone, it's all CGI because of the savings. Think about that for a minute. the best cinematography you will ever see, has already been made in the pre CGI era, and will never be seen again. 

Depressing. 

As an avid fan of animation, for me, that ship already sailed 20 years ago. In cinema, you at least get the odd high budget movie that still looks good, with decently made CGI if there has to be any, or films that do not rely on special effects that work mostly without CGI, or films where CGI is used appropriately, whereas in animation, we will never ever get anything that isn't trash grade digital any more, and worse, to wit:

3 hours ago, Bartimaeus said:

Disney's blurays/HD streams for their classic films are generally of very ill-repute for the techniques used to make them look contemporary (i.e. "clean" and digital) and it makes me the big mad. And no, I'm not ever going to stop talking about it when I see egregious examples of it, .

Even animation that once looked good (one can think of Disney films that they want, but for the most part, they're all impeccably animated) is ruined to make it look more modern - and the horrible implication that sits at the back of the fact that filters for this even exist, that modern audiences actually prefer this one-note digital coloring effect where everything looks clean and fake.

Kinda like CGI bears, except worse.

Resolution and random screencaps from the web nonwithstanding, we went from this:

To this:

Can someone please put me out of my misery?

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

Unfortunately, I've seen enough of Disney's other blurays to know that the phenomenon is not unique to Cinderella. Noise reduction is an ugly process that systematically leaves casualties in its wake, and whatever studio responsible for these sorts of modern HD re-releases is usually the only thing that we get for a given film - for better or for worse, and clearly Cinderella here got the "for worse" end of the stick. Previously, I've made mention of fans doing a terrible smorgasbord of filters to quality blurays in an attempt to simulate something like what Disney does...but that's a much better situation than the original bluray starting off like that - not possible to restore detail that isn't there.

Thankfully, I have not watched a Disney film in years and have no desire to after seeing that. Outside of anime I haven't really watched animation much lately, but looking at some of the restorations of films and comparing that to the Disney blu-ray makes it clear that the official remaster/restoration of animation is probably going to be ****.

45 minutes ago, Gorgon said:

This is what cinema is now though, the days of spending millions on sets and extras are gone, it's all CGI because of the savings. Think about that for a minute. the best cinematography you will ever see, has already been made in the pre CGI era, and will never be seen again. 

Eh, I wouldn't say that. Sure, big budget American studio films have gone down the ****ter and probably won't come back. Top Gun: Maverick is boring US military propaganda whose "real planes" (and CGI they don't wanna talk about as much) can't save it from mediocrity, but there are tons of amazing films being made around the world.

17 minutes ago, majestic said:

Can someone please put me out of my misery?

Maybe call up a Memory Beta wiki editor and see if they can do the job.