#widescreen cinema

[spaceintruderdetector]

https://archive.org/details/widescreen-cinema-john-belton/mode/2up

Widescreen and wide-film processes had existed since the 1890s. Why, then, John Belton asks, did 35mm film become a standard? Why did a widescreen revolution fail in the 1920s but succeed in the 1950s? And why did movies shrink again in the 1960s, leaving us with the small screen multiplexes and mall cinemas that we know today? The answers, he discovers, have as much to do with popular notions of leisure time and entertainment as with technology. Beginning with film's progress from peepshow to projection in 1896 and focusing on crucial stages in film history, such as the advent of sound, Belton puts widescreen cinema into its proper cultural context. He shows how Cinerama, CinemaScope, Vista Vision, Todd-AO, and other widescreen processes marked significant changes in the conditions of spectatorship after World War 11 -and how the film industry itself sought to redefine those conditions. The technical, the economic, the social, the aesthetic -every aspect of the changes shaping and reshaping film comes under Belton's scrutiny as he reconstructs the complex history of widescreen cinema and relates this history to developments in mass-produced leisure-time entertainment in the twentieth century. Highly readable even at its most technical, this book illuminates a central episode in the evolution of cinema and, in doing so, reveals a great deal about the shifting fit between film and society.

#cinema #widescreen cinema #film

[annoyingthemesong]

SUBLIME CINEMA #614 - THE DARJEELING LIMITED

I like this movie less overall than other Wes Anderson films, but I keep coming back to it for various reasons. It is drenched in an intangible nostalgia - the music, the locales, the colors, the friendships in a far away place - that is immensely attractive to me. It’s a feast for the senses, and if i feel lonely on a trip somewhere far away, this film has often been a companion. 

While it is a fantasy vision of India, it contains images that are wonderful, and are really incomparable to any other film (though Anderson was obviously inspired by Bollywood, Ray and Merchant / Ivory, even pilfering from the scores from some of those films to populate his own soundtrack). 

#cinema #film #films #movie #movies #wes anderson #the darjeeling limited #darjeeling #tea #filmmaking #cinematography #cinephile #film stills #widescreen #35mm #color #design #production design #twee #india #mumbai #bombay #filmmaker #great film #owen wilson #adrien brody #jason schwartzman #classic film #imaginary film #fantastic

[mariocki]

A very brief turn by Frazer Hines, as stable hand Jem, in Peter Diamond's pilot for a proposed adventure series Lochinvar (1968). There was little interest in the pilot or any subsequent series, and ultimately the sole filmed episode was never transmitted - it survived in the hands of director/producer Diamond until his family donated the film stock to Kaleidoscope a few years ago.

#fave spotting #frazer hines #lochinvar #tv pilot #jamie mccrimmon #doctor who #classic doctor who #1968 #peter diamond #an unusually small role for Frazer; he may not have been lead material‚ but he's barely onscreen 30 seconds here and was a well known tv #presence thanks to stints on Emergency Ward 10 and of course DW (which he was still starring in). possibly he did this as a favour to #Diamond; a ubiquitous stunt arranger and fight choreographer‚ this was Diamond's attempt at breaking out into production and direction but #he would have known Frazer from various jobs he'd done on DW (including Frazer's intro story The Highlanders‚ where Diamond had been fight #arranger as well as having a credited acting role as a sailor). this was shot around July '68 so presumably between Frazer's work on The #Mind Robber and The Invasion; apologies for the slightly weird stretcg effect on the pics but that's true of the materials themselves #strangely Lochinvar is not in 4:3 aspect‚ despite being quite definitely a tv pilot‚ but in a strangely unnatural widescreen as if the #masters were altered at some point in post production (perhaps for a potential cinema release as a support feature?). i can only conjecture #tho. unsurprisingly there's almost no info out there about this obscure tv film that sat in a rusty can for 50 years unseen. #also my immediate thought on reading about it was that the shooting dates Very Nearly coincide with The Mind Robber shooting #(nearly but not quite) and i excitedly wondered if maybe Frazer's infamous bout of chickenpox that saw him replaced for ep2 of that serial #had secretly been a little mischievous excuse to go away and have some fun playing with horses in Buckinghamshire... alas no #Diamond would reunite with Frazer (and Lochinvar co star Noel Coleman) for the following years The War Games where he'd again #be pulling double duty as fight arranger and (uncredited) actor. later in life he would end up doing a little more directing work for tv #but afaik the Peter Diamond Productions company that made this film never worked again

[spiltcandycoatedpunkblood]

how am I supposed to concentrate on the screen with the tintin film, I already have an attention disorder and you make tintin an absolute pretty boy and sakharine the hottest rich old villain, do you want me to watch this film or what

#the adventures of tintin #in my life i am forever tested #i'm not listening to the characters they're too hot #you can tell i'm all there for the plot huh lmaoooo #favourite films #this would've straight up killed me if i saw this widescreen in 3d at the cinema at the time #i actually think that #tintin #favourite characters #sakharine #ivan ivanovitch sakharine #fictional crushes

[rickchung]

In Depth Cinema x “Choosing the Right Aspect Ratio for Your Film ”.

There are a host of different standardized aspect ratios out there that filmmakers have used. From the almost square 1.19:1 to the extreme widescreen 2.76:1. In this video I'll go over a few of the most popular aspect ratios used in cinema and unpack some of the rationals for shooting in different ratios.  

#in depth cinema #cinema #film essay #video essay #video #film #movie #movies #aspect ratio #aspect ratios #filmmaking #dunkirk #dunkirk movie #christopher nolan #pulp fiction #quentin tarantino #tarantino #scope #widescreen #chaplin #charlie chaplin #in the mood for love #wong kar-wai #wong kar wai #hateful eight #the hateful eight #filmmaker #cinematic #filmmakers #academy ratio

[lapsedgamer]

Kenneth Branagh got a lot of shit for his Poirot’s moustache, but I saw A Haunting in Venice in the cinema and now I get it! This is a cinematic moustache. David Suchet’s iconic little twirl was the moustache we needed for analogue standard definition television, but the big screen calls for detail. The big screen calls for texture and depth. The big screen calls for panoramic width!

Branagh gives us the kind of moustache that bears up to scrutiny when projected ten feet wide across the silver screen, with layering and graceful angles that hold and guide the eye. It’s a sculptural object that commands the frame and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

We’ve seen this kind of controversial widescreen glow-up before of course:

Both iconic, both excellent designs.

#Poirot #kenneth branagh #david suchet #Star Trek #the next generation #a haunting in venice

[skinks]

SPOILERS FOR SALTBURN

I haven’t seen Promising Young Woman but I did just see Saltburn and now I’m so dubious about Fennell’s politics that I’m basically obligated to see PYW to confirm my suspicions. It’s not that I think she’s conservative necessarily, but more that she’s so upper class London nepo baby rich that she could aspire to socialist feminism as much as she likes but it’ll never land because her background precludes her from ever having anything relevant to say about class.

There were things I liked about Saltburn. The editing, performances, black humour, costumes, sets, cinematography (NOT the aspect ratio - will explain) and the ballsiness of certain “transgressive” scenes I did appreciate. This is what makes it so frustrating and disappointing as a film. If you turn your brain off, it’s a wild ride, quite hypnotic and lovely to look at in that specific dreamy way that the dark, cool interiors of a house get on the hottest days of the summer. I hated the 4:3 aspect ratio though, it was POINTLESS. Why was it used? Surely it would have made more sense to capture the grand expansiveness of the titular estate in widescreen? It just felt twee for twee’s sake, like it was shot to produce compositions ready-cropped for big gifs on tumblr.

The “shocking” “transgressive” “erotic” stuff is not particularly any of those things. I mean, for me anyway. It might titillate the type of new-puritan gen z-ers who self censor it to “seggs”, but there was only one sequence that felt really “wow, I haven’t seen that in movie before!” levels of Going There. And even then these scenes always felt self-consciously affected, like Fennell only included them because she wanted to write a movie with fReAkY stuff, as opposed to the freaky stuff coming organically from the characters. I remember sitting in the cinema to see Call Me By Your Name feeling like I was burning to a crisp at the scene where Elio huffs a pair of a man’s used swim trunks - because it felt so authentic to this expression of a character who is at critical levels of desperate teenage horniness. In Saltburn, when Oliver gets down on his knees and slurps Felix’s jizzy bath water, it’s like… okay? Why? What does he want? We saw him lie about knowledge of the fancy plates to ingratiate himself to the dad, we already have reason to distrust anything he says, so it’s hard to believe he has any authentic desire for Felix. And that’s the main problem with the whole movie - the writing is fairly atrocious.

There’s no mystery. There’s no ANYTHING. There’s a tiny quick-cut flash montage of future events in the movie right at the start of the thing, so already we’re going in with no doubts that Oliver is gonna go nuts. So we know that bad shit is gonna happen, and yet the movie pulls out a big Twist Ending reveal like we… weren’t supposed to know that he’s been bad from the beginning? We don’t need all these flashbacks to show us he’d planned his dastardly deeds offscreen the whole time when we’ve already seen him commit OTHER dastardly deeds ONSCREEN. He’s given zero motivation. He tells us he did what he did because he hates this rich family, starting with Jacob Elordi’s Felix, but he had planned the whole thing from before they ever even met, or saw how the family treats the other two main victims of class in the film, Pamela and Farleigh. When Oliver starts spinning his web, Felix has never been anything but genuinely kind to him. Felix never did him any personal wrong except being born handsome, popular, and rich.

That’s the other glaring issue. Fennell has said this is supposed be another one of these “eat the rich” satires, but…. beyond the usual foot-in-mouth clueless social blunders, the movie portrays none of the rich family as even all that bad. Oliver isn’t even all that poor! His family are revealed to be extremely comfortably upper-middle class! This is not Parasite!!! The worst ethical thing they do is cut off Farleigh from family money - but it’s obvious to the audience that this is actually Oliver’s fault. So all we’re left with is this main character who’s the worst of the lot, with no reason to do what he’s doing except for being an asocial loser creep. If you’re making a class satire in Britain and your message at the end of the film is “those creepy disgusting middle class will pervert and mutate themselves to have what the beautiful victimised rich people do” you’ve… uhh. Failed. Somewhere along the line.

It wants to be The Talented Mr Ripley, but it is confused and stupid. Given Fennell’s background and social circle, is it any wonder? It’s like she’s looked around at her fellow Eton Oxford lot and thought “so the poors hate us because we’re a bit silly and old fashioned, right? no wonder they’re jealous, we’re all so sexy and our houses are so nice! Of course they’d do anything to have this!” She hasn’t seemed to conceive of the fact that the working class in Britain hate the upper class because millions live in genuine poverty while they get to obstruct social change because of archaic birthright. That many people in Britain don’t actually want to be the upper class, they want an end to them.

The thing is, I had fun watching it. I laughed a lot, and then left the cinema distinctly unimpressed, as one often does after interacting with people who go to private school and are perfectly charming but clearly still think they’re better/smarter than you because they have generational land, or multiple houses. I worked for 6 years as the stable groom for the heiress to a publishing fortune, I’ve met plenty of these people, believe me. All this to say, that this is deeply frustrating because I would like to turn my brain off from the dodgy politics and just appreciate a movie that goes out of its way to be visually stylish and includes a scene where a sobbing Barry Keoghan gets naked and fucks the fresh grave of his boy best friend. Now that’s entertainment

#I love freaky weird stuff in movies that’s my favourite stuff #but not when it thinks it’s cool and clever for being freaky and weird #that’s being a tryhard #your movie should be freaky and weird because you are freaky and weird

[hexfloog]

Hiya! I was thinking about the remastered animation Cel style evil Conan post you put up recently, and I just wanted to say how amazing and impressive it is! I love love love the look of old animation and you really nailed it. I’ve been trying for ages to mimic that look myself and haven’t been able to crack it, so if you ever wanted to talk about your process on this piece, I’d be all ears! Wonderful work, again!

Waaah hi liv!! Thank you, I'm so glad you like it, and that it comes across so convincingly!! One of my favorite things is to make digital art that can have a second life as a different medium, and I wish I had an easy answer for you as to how I go about doing that, but the truth is that it's mostly the result of a lot of trial and error. And a metric ton of references.

Here's a quick process video of my last piece to try to show off what all my layers are like, but I know it's mostly useless without an explanation!! I can't explain it all because I was kinda winging this one for funsies but I can give you general tips for this particular look.

Clip and words below the break!

As a disclaimer I didn't really go into this one intending for it to come out looking the way it did. So it's more of a hybrid look between my usual "clean" digital rendering and a fake screenshot.

[1] Reference, role models, and inspiration - I'm not kidding when I say I used to tote around an entire, dedicated folder filled with printed reference. These days that usually takes the form of about a million browser tabs (￣▽￣) I stare at early Detco and the first six movies a LOT. And Cowboy Bebop. And Akira. And and [insert your choice of 80s-90s anime film]. Depending on the exact look you're trying to replicate, you can always look to a more era-appropriate movie.

I love pulling inspo from films in particular (both animated and live action) because cinema is a whole other art that employs all kinds of techniques for our usual considerations (like lighting and framing), and looking to them can inspire some pretty poignant imagery, especially when you're trying to create something that's meant to mimic a single-frame capture of exactly that. I don't keep up with movies or anything, but I do have my favorites, and it didn't really occur to me to look to them until some of my favorite artists revealed that they do the same with theirs.

For this particular piece, I also had to establish some consistency with the other piece that bookends the scene, so I actually referenced my own art, too.

[2] BIG canvas! I usually work at two or three times the size I expect to export. Following standard aspect ratios for animated productions can help sell the look. Letterboxes have their own ratio, too, if you choose a widescreen canvas; and subtitle fonts are usually standardized to certain font families and colors since their primary purpose is to help make the media accessible. All this is usually a quick google search away, OR… if you're like me, and you still watch physical media… you can just yoink most of this from a real DVD.

[3] Thin lines!! I still can't quite nail the right line weight for these-- I definitely went too thick here-- but they tend to be very fine. And imperfections are good! Nobody has a perfectly steady hand, especially with traditional cels.

[4] Less is usually more when trying to sell a screenshot look… it's easy to over-ink and over-render and-- in my opinion-- restraint is necessary to sell it. This is the hardest thing to explain… it's design vs. rote emulation, I think. But that said, digital aids (next point) do a lot of the heavy lifting in these - as far as the art is concerned, a little will go a long way! These were some of my easiest lines and shading. So on that note…

[5] …Blending modes, masks, and filters are all your friends o___o I get a lot of mileage out of the default tools already available to me in the art software. There's plenty out there that's available for free, too! I recommend you find a fake anime screenshot tutorial, follow it once, and just go nuts when you get to the part where you can play with these settings. The make-or-break for a convincing screenshot-- in my opinion-- is texture and bloom, and all these digital tools will help you achieve that.

I hope this helps!! Hopefully the video can help you see a bit more of the process since I can only really offer tips. It shows everything at full size so you can see the details, so go nuts!

Thank you for the ask! Beaming plenty of good luck that you can find the look you want!!

ALSO I REALLY HOPE THIS IS THE PIECE YOU MEANT I'M LITERALLY ABOUT TO QUEUE THIS UP AND JUST REALIZED THE ONE THAT CAME BEFORE THIS IS MORE REMASTERED CEL ANIMATION LOOK SKSKSKSK

the same tips apply though so i hope they still help all the same :3c

#ask #art #livmadart #queue

[dwn024]

i’ve mentioned this before but my favorite thing in the world is period pieces that stylistically mimic the media of the era they’re set in. i wish i Could think of enough actual real examples to get across what i mean but it just always pulls me out of it when you watch something that’s Supposed to be set in the 80s but it uses All the cinematography techniques of 2010s cinema and the soundtrack sound too modern epic cinematic orchestral shit when one of the most distinct things about the style of 80s movies is that a lot of them had VERY synth-heavy soundtracks, and it’s always that specific moog synth strings that when i hear i just instantly think of bladerunner

but for hypothetical examples of the shit i DO like and would like to see more of:

movie set in the 1940s with very “on-stage theater” shot blocking and flat camera angles. bonus points for the most extreme profanity being the occasional damn or hell, because even though people DID definitely say fuck and cunt and all that back then, in Movies it was a hell of a lot more scandalous. even for something set in just casual everyday 1940s life where people would be more candid it would be a nice touch to see that style maintained

movie set in the 1980s with a very clearly synthesized score i already said this one

cartoon set in the late 1990s with a very blocky graphical craig mccracken/genndy tartakovsky type art style and animated in 4:3 standard definition instead of 16:9 widescreen [*cough CMY2K cough*]

[freakingoutthesquares]

Tigger Pissed On Me. Or: The skeletons in Pulp's Closet Words: Nick Griffiths Taken from Deadline, July 1992

Welcome to widescreen, stereophonic anecdote-drama, with extra special guests, Pulp. Meeting them is a privilege.

The scene

Bunjies Coffee House, London, aka "The Folk Cellar", where the strains (literally) of celebrated folk guru, Gary Numan, are piping through cappuccino stained speakers. Enter three members of Pulp, Sheffield's answer to strangeness in pop - proof that Sheffield at least has an answer to something. Someone once wrote that Pulp took the stage "looking like the escape party from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", which was unfair. Drummer Nick's uncle is (the) Gordon Banks. Guitarist/violinist Russell maintains (misguidedly, even though he does stare a lot) that he is "the guy from Sparks". I suggest that singer/guitarist/object-of-impressionable-girls-desires Jarvis Cocker looks ever so slightly like Jimmy White. He does not take this as a compliment.

Skeleton One

RUSSELL: It was a snowy day and I was going to see a film. I arrived at the cinema, and there was a queue outside of about 20 people. I was behind this girl that I vaguely knew and l just started making conversation: "It's cold isn't it?: Yes it's cold: Very, very cold: Yes it is, very cold. Feel my cheeks." And I felt her cheeks and there's me thinking - cold, like a fridge - and I said, "Oh yeah, can I put my meat in your mouth?" People in the queue started turning round, and I'm holding her cheeks, and at that point the connotation of what I'd said dawned on me, so I tried to rectify it. The whole queue's watching me and I'm going - cause it's cold, like a fridge - I still had to stand there in that queue, cause to have gone off would have been admitting that was like, y'know... She never spoke to me again.

Skeleton Two

JARVIS: I once wore pink tights and a blonde wig for a school play, Twelfth Night. It was good though, because I got to feel the English teacher's breasts. We were doing a dress rehearsal and there was this bit where I had to make a gesture and land my hand on this girl's breasts. Which was a good part for me, cause I wore specs at school and had bad teeth, so I never used to get girls. But then she was ill this day and the English teacher, who everybody fancied, stood in for her. Halfway through the scene I realised I was going to have to grab hold of her tits. So I did, and everyone was going "What were it like? What were it like?"

ALL: What was it like?

JARVIS (Enviably nonchalant): It was alright.

Skeleton Three

JARVIS: Russell used to be a rocker. He used to be into Hawkwind (To Russell). Did you ever wear a lab coat?

RUSSELL: Ahem. No, I didn't actually, no.

JARVIS: And he used to have a very thin pencil moustache.

RUSSELL: I was in a heavy rock band called Isengard.

JARVIS: Isengard?

RUSSELL: It's a valley in Lord of the Rings.

Skeleton Four

JARVIS: Nick's got Nina Hagen written on his drum bag.

NICK: That was my friend's.

JARVIS: These are the excuses he comes out with.

NICK: I did go and see some very dodgy punk bands. I went to see Angelic Upstarts in Rotherham. Me and a couple of mates were right up for it. We got the tickets and on the day thought "Fookin 'ell, there'll be loads of skinheads there; we might get beaten up." I put on this punk T shirt to go down there and we decided to go in the back way in case there were loads of skinheads round the front. We got close to the entrance and still thought there may be loads of skinheads there, so we decided to go round to a friend's house and come back later. In the end we never actually got to the concert cos we were so scared of getting beaten up by skinheads.

Skeleton Five

RUSSELL: I got pissed on by a tiger on a school trip.

DEADLINE: What were you doing lying underneath a tiger?

RUSSELL: No, we were at the zoo and it was time to go, and I'm looking at this tiger and it's looking at me. It turned it's back on me and cocked its tail - and have you ever seen Tomcats spray? Tigers do it, like, big stylee. There was no escape from it: It was just like "Ppsssscchwooosshh". And I'm saturated in this tiger piss and it's like "time to go now". What do you do? I'm sat on this coach seat on me own and all the way back they were going "What's that horrible smell?". It's like "Oh, Miss, a tiger pissed on me". What can you say?

Skeleton Six

RUSSELL: I tried to fly. I used to have a cacky conservatory with a red and white striped awning made of plastic. And I decided to make it into a hang-glider - although hang-gliders weren't really invented at this stage; It was just a big kite. I made this massive thing about 15 foot long and I'm running up and down our road. like, jumping. And I took it on our school field and there's all these people watching me, and I'm running down it and I did start to take off, and it nosedived and landed on top of me. So I'm trapped underneath and I couldn't crawl out, and everybody's lying around laughing. Then I had to drag it back home and nobody would help me. I was really pissed off. Dragging this thing back like it was a bloody cross or something.

Skeleton Seven

JARVIS: I used to have loads of rubbish hobbies. I had collecting badges - nice big ones.

DEADLINE: What sort?

JARVIS: Oh, anything - double glazing... Even me Mother was always trying to get me to write to Swap Shop to be on it. She even knitted me a jumper and said, "You can put all your badges on that", Which I thought was sad. She asks me if I've still got it.

Skeleton Eight

JARVIS: We did our first ever concert at school. We decided we wanted to have dry ice, so we had a word with the chemistry teacher about it and he said, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'll sort you something out". We played this concert on the school stage and there was the chemistry teacher with two swotty kids, and he had a bunsen burner. And he kept getting a bit of magnesium ribbon and it'd just go 'pff'. And that was supposed to be pyrotechnics. It was like a little chemistry lesson at the side of the stage. A bit of green smoke that only went a couple of inches. Very tragic.

Actually Pulp are very cool

  Alvin Stardust (During his Shane Fenton period) slept on Jarvis' parents' floor.

  It's rumoured that Joe Cocker fitted Jarvis' parents' gas fire.

  One of Mike Harding's guitar strings hangs around a statue at Jarvis' parents house.

  Nick has met Ken Goodwin (All: Who?)

  Tony Christie used to live around the corner from Jarvis.

  Emlyn Hughes (allegedly) used to shag a woman who lived at the bottom of Jarvis' road. "It got to be known that he was doing it, so the kids used to gather around on a Sunday Morning and shout up at the bedroom window."

  Pulp are "deep personal friends" of Paul King.

  Jarvis has "done a fart next to Mike Edwards" of Jesus Jones. "It was this party in a pub. There were only two urinals; he went to use one, I went to use the other one. And you know when you do an involuntary fart when you're having a pee? There was nobody else to blame it on, and I wasn't finished, so I had to stand there looking embarrassed."

  Nick has drunk from the League Cup.

  Jarvis has Dixon of Dock Green's and Brian Clough's autographs.

  Nick: "Tommy Cooper once brushed past me"

  It's all getting a bit tenuous now, isn't it?

The Plug

Pulp have a sense of humour. Lots of other bands don't. The only reason they might gaze at their shoes onstage is to check that they've put their shoes on. Pulp could easily be the hippest band of this year, if only they could sort out their contractual wrangles and if only people would have heard of them. To say Pulp are refreshing live is like saying that Martin Amis is quite pretentious. They are a Bounty Ice Cream on a very hot day. Buy their new-ish "O.U." EP this instant, otherwise people will point at you and laugh.

Transcription: Acrylic Afternoons

#russell senior #jarvis cocker #steve mackey #nick banks #candida doyle #pulp #90s #almost britpop #printed interview #interview

[ladyloveandjustice]

Onto episode 7! I have no idea what's going on, but I appreciate that they went far enough to put the show in cinematic widescreen. After all, I've always thought this was True Cinema.

#nev watches the demon girl next door

[frownyalfred]

yay another person who's watched BvS for *counts on my fingers* *lost count*

anyhoo it's one of the most cherished DVD I have and I don't have many so that says a lot (almost bought the MoS BvS ZSJL boxset but didn't because money)

so quick question: widescreen or iMax?

after ZSJL's release there's another version of BvS released which is iMax version of the ultimate cut (in all honesty haven't watched theatrical cut basically outside of cinema for the more elaborate details and just for the more contents). the screen would be 1:1 at some scenes

which one do you prefer, the widescreen one or the iMax one?

(just chucking an Ask to your inbox for some interaction lol)

I highly prefer traditional widescreen. I can appreciate the IMAX format but not for that long of a movie.

I know there’s a scene in BVS someone made a post about the other day — in the IMAX cut, you can see some details that are missing in the widescreen cut (Bruce egging on/tricking Clark during their big fight) but I can’t find that post…

Watching the Ultimate version was really the big seller for me on the movie as a whole. I liked it when I saw the theatrical cut in theaters (opening scene KILLED me as I’ve mentioned several times) but Luthor��s motivations and plans weren’t super clear until those missing scenes were filled in for me.

Then again, I’m a horrible judge of movies. I don’t follow plots too closely because I want to enjoy the vibe more than the specific details. And BVS is chock full of vibes and snappy quotes. And an excellent score (with great Batman motifs!)

#thank you for asking me stuff and giving me some interaction!!! #these are my BvS takes hopefully they’re nor horrible #batman #bruce wayne #dc #clark kent #superman #bvs #zsjl #zack snyder

[petty-crush]

“The Hidden Fortress”

-two buffoon thieves find themselves witnesses to an increasingly absurd (and delightful) war of clans

-Akira Kurosawa and his big brassy style of filmmaking just makes me happy; even films I like look stillwater next to him

-one of his greatest strengths is his unpredictable and elastic editing

-a quick scene of stoping guards from ratting out a princess turns into a ten minute duel between generals

+and bounces back like a key in a lock

-Toshiro Mifune absolutely projects the presence of a general who should be followed to the end of the earth

-this whole film has a lived in, squalled, medieval vibe

+I fucking love it

-again, there is some cinema magic in threes; the two thieves are obtusely amusing, and the silent strength general is disarming; but together they form a riveting troupe of eccentrics

-the part where the thieves witness the last warrior of a clan killed nakedly via horseback is shocking

-even more so then his other films, Kurosawa’s influences from the silent age of film ring loud

+a scene of a crowd on the steps is clear DW Griffith and any moment of horse riding is awesomely John Ford (but in Kurosawa’s own voice)

-the princess is completely badass; her moments of covert silence is an emotional canvas and her carefully chosen mask droppings are tender inducing

-I again note how Kurosawa is amazing for placing scenes with multiple people but not cutting angles; we see all the faces and how they react to dropping their guard

-the part where the princess chides the rival general for blaming Mifune for the suffering the rival’s boss put on him is devastating

+as is her complete willingness to die, having tasted earthy beauty

-greatly amused how characters can be added(the prostitute)and subtracted (the two gold carriers) without a single loss of momentum

-I love Mifune’s laugh

-the widescreen film stock cinematography (and fluid camera work) is so suited to Kurosawa it’s a little surprising it took 18 films(!) and 15 years for him to fit his hand in like a glove

-think about that for a second; a film maker got to make almost twenty films (some rather great) before hitting his full stride

+this is why nurturing artists(and letting them practice in public) is so important to our collective well being

-it contributes to our hearts, even if in a galaxy far far away

-this film definitely has a 7th act; it’s almost another mini movie in the last 15 minutes

-I never get use to (nor do I hope I ever) the undertow of humanism in Kurosawa’s work

+it is impossible to imagine his films without it

-Kurosawa really is the eccentric’s master magician

-I cannot imagine this film being a minute shorter. It is just packed

-Also surprisingly funny as fuck at times

-This is a film that thrills the heart and makes people want to do their best work, in art or solidarity

#the hidden fortress #akira kurosawa #film #new beverly cinema #toshiro mifune #misa uehara #minoru chiaki #kamatari fujiwara #new bev

[magicalgirlpenny]

it’s so convenient that the youtuber player in cinema mode is wide screen so that every video has huge black bars at the sides, except widescreen videos that instead get a huge black border around them bc they don’t actually use the extra space

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

Like pretty much every other half-hour Sentai ‘movie’ in existence that didn’t really have a lot to it and is very skippable, but also it’s always fun to see these little movies for pre-2006 movies since they’re in widescreen and full HD; you get to see all these suits and transformation sequences and attacks in a MUCH better resolution and it’s a treat. “Movie Version” is what a lot of these get called and it’s about as apt a description as you can get: it’s just an episode of the TV series but with cinema-quality visuals. Worth a watch just for that

#hurricane of justice

[spaceintruderdetector]

How messing with split-screen/ aspect ratio went mainstream

‘‘The effect still seems mildly adventurous, though it has been around since the birth of cinema. Lois Weber’s Suspense (1913) uses an innovative triangular split that still looks startling. In the last reel of Abel Gance’s 1927 epic Napoléon, the Academy screen opens out into three sets of film projected side by side to form a widescreen triptych.’‘ ....

if the guardian is covering split screen then it has gone mainstream for sure. never mind. maybe the reason split screen is not used today (digital post production brings the cost close to zero) is because it destroys  the illusion of the cinema (camera) image being a close facsimile of the image perceived by the eye  . many of the dominant film theories, from Kracauer  and Bazin to Deleuze put a lot of emphasis on the long take as the paramount standard of cinema.(those guys never visited a camera room for sure, all those different lenses lying around). montage is frowned upon by them, so montage within a frame must had seemed like a real headache or even a nightmare.

PS- I wonder what Bazin or Deleuze thought about Tom and Jerry

 https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/29/youve-been-reframed-how-playing-with-split-screen-and-aspect-ratio-went-mainstream

#cinema #optical effect #special effects #filmmaking #film editing