"Cloud Atlas"

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• Oliver_C says:

  October 25, 2012 at 4:59 am

  Lana Wachowski may prove to be a more inter­est­ing film-maker than Larry ever was. Here’s hop­ing for few­er adolescent-male wank­fests and not so many sunglasses.

• Petey says:

  October 25, 2012 at 7:57 am

  “I haven’t read the entirety of Mitchell’s book”
  Gack. Why not? It’s a REALLY good book.

• Matt Miller says:

  October 25, 2012 at 9:38 am

  I liked the movie a good bit more than you, Glenn, but I was sur­prised (and a little dis­ap­poin­ted) at how form­ally unam­bi­tious it was, at least in com­par­is­on to SPEED RACER. I sus­pect that the film­makers were (per­haps rightly) uncom­fort­able in ask­ing a main­stream audi­ence to accept a major break with con­ven­tion in style on top of the com­plex­ity of the narrative.
  I also felt that the Wachowski/Tykwer con­cep­tion of the story emphas­ized romantic love as the anti­thes­is to cruelty and oppres­sion, where­as Mitchell was more inter­ested in a broad­er concept of empathy and basic human con­nec­tion. It still works, unlike the sim­il­ar over­em­phas­is on romantic love in V FOR VENDETTA, which, ugh.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 25, 2012 at 9:46 am

  I dis­agree, Glenn. It does­n’t com­pletely work but it’s not “just anoth­er plat­it­ud­in­ous over­blown pummel-you-into-submission movie-machine.” On a pure action movie­level it’s quite excit­ing. This might give it the audi­ence it needs to nav­ig­ate the mar­ket­place. But then it might not.
  Ran into Mitchell at Book Soup last week where he was buy­ing a copy of my book (insert shame­less plug for “Masters of Cinema: Roman Polanski”) and he told me he was quite pleased with the movie, but at the same time quite sur­prised in tat of everything he’s writ­ten it’s the one least ammen­able to film adaptation.

• I.B. says:

  October 25, 2012 at 11:31 am

  They’ll nev­er do bet­ter than BOUND.

• Scott Nye says:

  October 25, 2012 at 5:48 pm

  I like the movie a lot, in spite of its prob­lems, and sim­il­arly wrestled with the rel­at­ive visu­al nor­mal­ity (par­tic­u­larly, as Matt noted, in the wake of the tran­scend­ent SPEED RACER). I’m won­der­ing if it was­n’t a truce of sorts between the three film­makers so that their sec­tions flowed togeth­er bet­ter, mak­ing the trans­itions less jar­ring and feed­ing into the whole “everything is con­nec­ted” theme. While it would have been inter­est­ing to see dif­fer­ent film­mak­ing styles employed in each sec­tion, I won­der if it would have under­mined their everything-is-montage aesthetic.

• Petey says:

  October 25, 2012 at 6:42 pm

  “Ran into Mitchell … sur­prised in tat of everything he’s writ­ten it’s the one least ammen­able to film adaptation.”
  One level, of course. On anoth­er level, none of his oth­er of his books are fin­an­cially amen­able to film adaptation.
  – Ghostwritten is too expens­ive for its indie audi­ence niche.
  – number9dream does­n’t add up fin­an­cially for a vari­ety of reasons.
  – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is way too expens­ive for a niche Oscar contender.
  I sup­pose they could make Black Swan Green if the British gov­ern­ment were still fund­ing films like that, but that ship seems to have sailed.
  Cloud Atlas, des­pite all its unfil­mab­il­ity, at least has the scope, ambi­tion, and block­buster­ness to attract crazy folks like the Wachowski twins and fund­ing. Hell, Mitchell even includes char­ac­ters giv­ing actu­al cinema dir­ec­tion to scenes in the book, not to men­tion that it’s got movies inside of movies going on.
  (The REAL way to make Cloud Atlas would be to mini-series it with HBO, per­haps with a Euro part­ner. Give it a $60+ mil­lion budget for 8 or 10 hours, and film it with the same nes­ted dolls chro­no­logy as the actu­al book. If HBO can do Mildred Pierce, the Euro coali­tion can do Carlos, I think an HBO / Euro part­ner­ship would’ve been the best home for the project.)

• Dan Coyle says:

  October 26, 2012 at 12:08 am

  I con­sider Speed Racer to be super­i­or to all three Matrix movies, but it’s still just well executed pap. The move­ment to rehab­il­it­ate it speaks more of audi­ences’ and crit­ics’ col­lect­ive guilt over elev­at­ing the Wachowskis to the god­like status they were clearly incap­able of hav­ing, instead of the mod­er­ately skilled hacks/exceptionally skilled mar­keters they always have been and always will be.
  Man, it was finally nice to remove that bug from my ass.

• lazarus says:

  October 26, 2012 at 1:46 am

  Someone inap­pro­pri­ately used the term “hack”? What a surprise!
  The only film they were brought on as hired guns for, to an extent, was Speed Racer, which they wound up writ­ing any­way. And it’s the most form­ally dar­ing of all their works, so pretty tough to call that hackery.
  So say what you want about them, but they should­n’t be con­fused with the people that drift from job to job and don’t get to ini­ti­ate any projects.

• Josh Z says:

  October 26, 2012 at 8:18 am

  I find Speed Racer apo­lo­gists to be a fas­cin­at­ing breed. Where exactly is the line between “form­ally dar­ing” and “tedi­ously repetititve”?

• Petey says:

  October 26, 2012 at 8:28 am

  “I con­sider Speed Racer to be super­i­or to all three Matrix movies”
  The ori­gin­al Matrix is actu­ally a quite good and form­ally stun­ning movie.
  Not only did I very much enjoy it, but it’s VERY rare that I walk out of the cinema unable to under­stand how an effect was accom­plished, as I did with the ‘stop time / move cam­era’ effect they accom­plished with all the syn­chron­ized still cam­er­as. I thought that par­tic­u­lar spe­cial effect was as amaz­ing and revolu­tion­ary as the Hitchcock dolly/zoom effect. Eternal kudos to the Wachowski twins for that alone.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 26, 2012 at 10:24 am

  No mith­cell did not stutter,and he alread had a cop of my book in his hand when he spoke to me.

• kdlough says:

  October 26, 2012 at 4:30 pm

  Petey, Eadweard Muybridge is shak­ing a rot­ting fist at you right now.

• Petey says:

  October 26, 2012 at 6:18 pm

  “Petey, Eadweard Muybridge is shak­ing a rot­ting fist at you right now.”
  Fascinatingly, if you look at it frame by frame, you can see at the apo­gee of the ‘shake’, Muybridge’s rot­ting fin­gers open, mak­ing it no longer a fist…

• Tom Carson says:

  October 26, 2012 at 9:55 pm

  I can under­stand the people who – des­pite mis­giv­ings – want to com­pli­ment CLOUD ATLAS for being “ambi­tious.” We’d all like to see Hollywood tak­ing more dares. But as Kris Kristofferson once said while serving on a film jury, “Shit don’t beget noth­ing but more shit.”

• RoyRRip says:

  October 27, 2012 at 12:48 am

  “I thought that par­tic­u­lar spe­cial effect was as amaz­ing and revolu­tion­ary as the Hitchcock dolly/zoom effect. Eternal kudos to the Wachowski twins for that alone.”
  That effect had already been used in com­mer­cials and the LOST IN SPACE movie before the Wachowskis got their hands on it.

• Petey says:

  October 27, 2012 at 8:12 am

  “That effect had already been used in com­mer­cials and the LOST IN SPACE movie before the Wachowskis got their hands on it.”
  I know the Wachowski twins did­n’t invent the tech­nique just as the “Hitchcock zoom” was inven­ted by Irmin Roberts, but still…

• Glenn Kenny says:

  October 27, 2012 at 11:05 am

  Tom, I agree with the spir­it of Mr. Kristofferson’s obser­va­tion. But as you are also no doubt aware, my com­mend­a­tion of the ambi­tion on dis­play here is a pro­vi­sion­al one. I’d have been more impressed if they’d remade “The Saragossa Manuscript” or something.

• Jajjjc says:

  October 27, 2012 at 11:09 am

  I still like the ori­gin­al Matrix got a lot, as well. The sequels not so much, and I can­’t get on board with the Speed Racer love…but the ori­gin­al is a good one, even among all those beloved 1999 films.
  And I’m pretty much in agree­ment with your Cloud Atlas review, Glenn. Ambitious, but did­n’t click with me at all. I’m all for more ambi­tious films from Hollywood, but when it inev­it­ably flops at the box office this week, I won’t shed too many tears.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 27, 2012 at 11:51 am

  “The Saragossa Manuscript” does­n’t need to be remade. Has got it right the first time.
  The best pic­ture of the year so far remains “Keep the Lights On.”

• andy says:

  October 27, 2012 at 8:23 pm

  Bullet time blew my mind when I first saw it in Buffalo 66–still the best, baby!

• Brendan says:

  October 30, 2012 at 11:08 am

  Worth point­ing out that neither the ref­er­enced com­mer­cials, Lost in Space, or Buffalo 66 used the same effect at The Matrix. Those films froze the action dur­ing the effect while the Matrix effect did­n’t – effect­ively the dif­fer­ence between a freeze frame and a slow motion shot.

• Tom Block says:

  October 30, 2012 at 2:46 pm

  How was bullet-time “revolu­tion­ary”? It was a tech­no­lo­gic­al advance, but it was­n’t like, say, the jux­ta­pos­i­tion of dif­fer­ent film speeds, in “The Wild Bunch”. That was an advance which added some­thing that was actu­ally new to film grammar.

• Petey says:

  November 3, 2012 at 3:53 pm

  “How was bullet-time “revolu­tion­ary?”
  You may be semantic­ally cor­rect here, but much like the Hitchcock zoom, it was still authen­tic­ally and genu­inely a Big Deal. Step right this way! Never seen before! You won’t believe your eyes!
  And props to Brenden for his appre­ci­ated clarification.