Part 2. Part 1 is here.
Okay, let's go back and run down all the stupid, breaking it down geographically because why the hell not, it's not as if any damn scene in that entire episode needed to be placed where it was.
SPOILERS
Monday, June 16, 2014
Sunday, June 15, 2014
The Winter Soldier review, take 2
Take 1 having been written under the influence of an extraordinarily negative fellow critic.
Captain America The Winter Soldier does one thing utterly and totally brilliantly, and it really needs a name for this sort of thing.
(Spoilers)
Captain America The Winter Soldier does one thing utterly and totally brilliantly, and it really needs a name for this sort of thing.
(Spoilers)
Some thoughts on this season of Game of Thrones (and the finale specifically)
I maintain that stretching 400 pages out over 10 hours was frickin' dumb.
To put this in perspective for a moment: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the novel, is 258 pages long and uses a larger type than A Storm of Swords. The (extraordinarily faithful) film adaptation is two hours and twenty minutes long. There are 34 lines of text per page in A Storm of Swords and 32 in OHMSS, so let's engage in some completely specious math and claim that you can wrangle about one hour out of about 100 pages of Storm text. This squares nicely with the first two seasons.
Applying the stretching ratio that the Game of Thrones producers inflicted on us this year, we'd be looking at a six-hour long OHMSS. Bugger all would happen - granted, Fleming is a more concise writer than Martin.
Speaking of OHMSS - no, not the bit where there's a wedding where one of the happy couple dies right after, or the dark-haired awkwardly-acted hero's ginger love interest dies shortly after a battle at a high altitude in a snowy clime, or even the fact that Diana Rigg's in both, although that last bit is hi-frickin-larious - OHMSS was directed by someone capable of staging fight scenes. I mean, huffing kell, Peter Hunt is basically responsible for the lightning-fast editing of films today - a bit of hyperbole, but I stand by it - but the key difference is YOU CAN TELL WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON. THERE ARE ENOUGH SHOTS AT WIDE ANGLES AND THE CAMERA NEVER CROSSES THE 180 LINE. This is like, filmmaking 101, but apparently some people need a refresher.
Alex Graves is not capable of staging fight scenes.
I could go back and watch it again, but I'm pretty sure the Mountain/Viper fight in episode 8 was about 50% reaction shots. I'm so glad that all of these people were more entertained than I was by the fight they got to witness. Good for them. This is, like, one of the biggest and bestest duels in the books and I was really excited to see it.
SPLOILERS
To put this in perspective for a moment: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the novel, is 258 pages long and uses a larger type than A Storm of Swords. The (extraordinarily faithful) film adaptation is two hours and twenty minutes long. There are 34 lines of text per page in A Storm of Swords and 32 in OHMSS, so let's engage in some completely specious math and claim that you can wrangle about one hour out of about 100 pages of Storm text. This squares nicely with the first two seasons.
Applying the stretching ratio that the Game of Thrones producers inflicted on us this year, we'd be looking at a six-hour long OHMSS. Bugger all would happen - granted, Fleming is a more concise writer than Martin.
Speaking of OHMSS - no, not the bit where there's a wedding where one of the happy couple dies right after, or the dark-haired awkwardly-acted hero's ginger love interest dies shortly after a battle at a high altitude in a snowy clime, or even the fact that Diana Rigg's in both, although that last bit is hi-frickin-larious - OHMSS was directed by someone capable of staging fight scenes. I mean, huffing kell, Peter Hunt is basically responsible for the lightning-fast editing of films today - a bit of hyperbole, but I stand by it - but the key difference is YOU CAN TELL WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON. THERE ARE ENOUGH SHOTS AT WIDE ANGLES AND THE CAMERA NEVER CROSSES THE 180 LINE. This is like, filmmaking 101, but apparently some people need a refresher.
Alex Graves is not capable of staging fight scenes.
I could go back and watch it again, but I'm pretty sure the Mountain/Viper fight in episode 8 was about 50% reaction shots. I'm so glad that all of these people were more entertained than I was by the fight they got to witness. Good for them. This is, like, one of the biggest and bestest duels in the books and I was really excited to see it.
SPLOILERS
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