Something new at The Auteurs

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• Max says:

  June 19, 2009 at 4:11 pm

  Is Bruno cinema? Interesting ques­tion. Personally, I’d love to hear YOUR take on it.
  However, will it be hil­ari­ous and bril­liantly poin­ted, much like its pre­de­cessor? If the trail­er is an indic­a­tion, I’m fairly certain.
  And I hear what you’re say­ing about Public Enemies; I thought Miami Vice was among the worst pic­tures in recent years by a respec­ted dir­ect­or, and wins the prize for worst movie com­ing from most awe­some trail­er. But I do enjoy the peri­od details reflec­ted in digit­al pho­to­graphy, which is the main reas­on I want to see it.

• John Svatek says:

  June 19, 2009 at 8:16 pm

  Max wrote:
  “But I do enjoy the peri­od details reflec­ted in digit­al pho­to­graphy, which is the main reas­on I want to see it.”
  Yes! I’ve been won­der­ing why the trail­er inter­ested me since I’ve nev­er had much interest in Mann, and that’s why the shots looked gor­geous and strangely reminded me of “Zodiac.” Are they using the same cam­era? Any tech­nic­al people know why digital–in the right hands–has this effect on the “past”?
  (Plus, what else is out there this sum­mer [when you don’t live in the big city, and the Landmark tak­ing over the Ritz in Philly has really lowered your trips into town]?)

• Tony Dayoub says:

  June 20, 2009 at 8:01 am

  Vacuous as it may seem, Miami Vice still has a visu­ally sat­is­fy­ing qual­ity that seems to be inher­ent to Mann’s digit­al pho­to­graphy. While I would nev­er rank it among 2006’s best offer­ings, like oth­er Mann films the movie grows with repeat viewings.
  Like a Rorschach test, Vice is a film that sup­ports dif­fer­ent read­ings depend­ing on what you bring to it, due in no small part to its very blank­ness. And as usu­al, Mann puts enough work into the throwaway details that the film starts reveal­ing hid­den lay­ers when one is attuned to those points.

• Max says:

  June 20, 2009 at 9:04 am

  @Tony: Really, while I did like the visu­als of the film, I found it just incred­ibly bor­ing. It was just Farell and Fox stand­ing around wait­ing a lot, look­ing brood­ing and say­ing things like “Don’t worry, I know which way is up.” But I knew there was an action sequence, and it was all I could do to stay awake; this movie had to have SOMETHING redempt­ive about it. But the gun­fight arrived, and it was so inco­her­ently edited that I did­n’t know, at any giv­en time, who was shoot­ing at who. I just think it’s a tre­mend­ous waste of time and Mann’s tal­ent on a script not worth its weight.
  @John Svatek: I’m tech­nic­ally unsavvy, so from Wikipedia:
  “Fincher decided to use the digit­al Thomson Viper Filmstream cam­era to shoot the film (Zodiac) … Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, Zodiac was not shot entirely digit­ally; tra­di­tion­al high-speed film cam­er­as were used for slow-motion murder sequences.[12] Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, as well as his pre­vi­ous effort, Collateral (a co-production of Paramount and its cur­rent sis­ter stu­dio DreamWorks, and which also starred Mark Ruffalo), were also shot with the cam­era but mixed in oth­er formats.[13] Once shot on the Viper cam­era, the files were con­ver­ted to DVCPro HD 1080i and edited in Final Cut Pro. This was for edit­or­i­al decisions only. During the later stages of edit­ing the ori­gin­al uncom­pressed 1080p 4:4:4 RAW digit­al source foot­age was assembled auto­mat­ic­ally to main­tain an up-to-date digit­al “neg­at­ive” of the movie.”
  So, in short, yes, prob­ably. If he used it for Vice and Collateral, there’s a damn good chance. Good eye!

• Lou Lumenick says:

  June 20, 2009 at 9:51 am

  I thought the fan­boys who attacked the crit­ics who failed to recog­nize the bril­liance of THE DARK KNIGHT in advance of the fan­boys see­ing it were pretty rabid, but Wells has aroused an auteur­ist lynch mob in his com­ments section.

• lazarus says:

  June 20, 2009 at 1:20 pm

  I’m a huge Mann fan who loves Miami Vice AND Ali (though I’d only rate Collateral as “good”), but I’m not very excited for Public Enemies either. I don’t neces­sar­ily want him locked in the mod­ern urb­an set­ting, but see­ing him try to top The Untouchables (not much of a chal­lenge) isn’t some­thing I’m inter­ested in. It also may have some­thing to do with my dis­taste for Disney’s new­est whore Captain Jack Tonto, whose mannered act­ing style does noth­ing for me.

• Jeff McM says:

  June 20, 2009 at 3:15 pm

  Wells would­n’t be Wells if he was­n’t get­ting people pissed off for no good reas­on about something.

• JC says:

  June 20, 2009 at 7:15 pm

  Don’t worry, Lou. This was all blow over, and you’ll be back to being most remembered for whack­ing Ebert with a pro­gram. All in due time. 😉

• JC says:

  June 20, 2009 at 7:16 pm

  Crap, typo..this will all blow over, that is. 😉

• aion kinah says:

  June 25, 2009 at 2:56 am

  Don’t worry, Lou. This was all blow over, and you’ll be back to being most remembered for whack­ing Ebert with a pro­gram. All in due time. 😉