Gravity (2012)

Largo's Shark wrote:

CHILDREN OF MEN was one of the worst films of the last decade, I tell you.

And it's my favorite movie of the century thus far, so that balances things up a little.

I really wanted to go see this right away, but I've been sick as a dog for about 5 days now. The raves about the 3D are almost enough to get me to see it that way (would be my first 3D feature in over 30 years), but I think I'll stick with 2D for the first viewing at least. The trailer visuals look better than what I could imagine in my head with respect to lighting and 'feel' of low-Earth-orbit, so I don't think I'll have a suspension of disbelief issue on the visuals, but I'd be flabbergasted if i liked this anywhere near as much as CoM, just because I don't think it'll push all my buttons. The only real disappointment re: the visuals is that they didn't have the time and money to finish at 4K and instead the whole thing is 2K, but if it is a wonderful looking 2K, then who am I to bitch?

My Cuaron interview is up online at:
http://www.icgmagazine.com/wordpress/2013/10/04/exposure-alfonso-cuaron/

and the overall story is at:
http://www.icgmagazine.com/wordpress/2013/10/04/star-fall/

The editor definitely added to my copy, so it gets a bit gushy at times. I'd rarely write that anybody (except maybe Sean in FRWL or Jack Lemmon in MISSING) ever "played to perfection," and would never say so if I hadn't seen the movie with my own eyes, that's for sure.

Saw it today. Very impressive. It's gorgeous visually -- the CG is wonderfully done and 3-D is the only way to see it -- and it's really pretty riveting.

Clooney and Bullock are both surprisingly good. I didn't really mind the couple hokey, sentimental bits, but regardless, the sum of Gravity's parts sure are stellar.

Harms, could you elaborate a bit on your viewing?

Loomis wrote:

trevanian wrote:

Straight from the horse's mouth - no sound in space (unless she is touching something, in which case you have a kind of an aural vibration) except musical score.

I hope the score doesn't end up defeating the (admirable) purpose of the film's no-sound-in-space aspect.

From certain reviews I've heard, it does. Obtrusive, RC-style pap.

The score is overbearing in exactly two places -- the very beginning, which actually helps to emphasize the silence in space immediately after; and the very end, where overbearing music is kind've expected.

It's the worst film score in years. Endless pounding and droning.

Composer Steven Price talks about the soundtrack...

Quote :

"With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise," Price said. "Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through." But because Cuaron was only interested in allowing sounds that the astronauts would hear themselves, that wasn't necessary.

"You'd hear stuff within their spacesuits," Price said. "If they touched something, you'd hear the vibration that they'd hear, but you don't hear any exterior noises. We kind of knew the music would be responsible for all the other things. I was asked to try and tonally represent things that would ordinarily be sound. You don't hear an explosion in the film, but you might hear some pulsation in the music that reflects it. The score is doing the job of traditional sound, while the sound crew was able to do an interesting job on their own."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/gravity-steven-price_n_4039455.html

Could you expound on your thoughts on the film, Harms - since you're the only one here who seems to have been disappointed by it?

Sure.

Technically, it's impressive, insofar as it is a great demonstration of CGI's capabilities (the film is 80% computer generated, and in many of the shots in the film, the only photographed element is the performers' faces).

But GRAVITY does not have the courage to pursue the simplicity of its concept, bringing in hammy, trite Hollywood existentialism and absurd blockbustery moments. GRAVITY's idea of spirituality is a contrived, weepy backstory for Bullock's character and a handful of heavy-handed "symbolic" shots (including a laughable spaceship-as-womb moment).

The score is the nail in the film's coffin. The film would be substantially better without it, since it constantly undermines the film's attempt to immerse you in the realm of outer space and makes the film's heavy-handed moments all the more obnoxious.

Harmsway wrote:

(including a laughable spaceship-as-womb moment).

I did snicker at that moment because it was so contrived, stuck out like a sore thumb.

I agree about the score being a bit overbearing, especially towards the middle of the film (I didn't mind it at the end). It's the weak link in the movie, for sure.

Call me dense and naive...but aside from some of the aforementioned attempts at symbolism, I never really got the impression that film was trying to be especially "profound" or anything, particularly in a way that something like 2001 was (and let's not forget that 2001 had plenty of obvious birth imagery). It'd seem to me like Cuaron was going for a survival story, like a stylized APOLLO 13, not so much 2001.

I see Armond didn't care for it, so you may want to take a pass, Sharky.

I'd rather watch a film about the life and times of Gravity's Silhouette.

dr. strangelove wrote:

Call me dense and naive...but aside from some of the aforementioned attempts at symbolism, I never really got the impression that film was trying to be especially "profound" or anything, particularly in a way that something like 2001 was (and let's not forget that 2001 had plenty of obvious birth imagery).

2001's birth imagery was not so obvious when the film was released, and it established itself early on as a mythic narrative, so such grand visuals made sense. In GRAVITY, that kind of symbolism is out of place.

Yeah, that's what I felt. GRAVITY is at it's best when it's rooted in its terrifying realism. When it goes for the symbolism stuff it falls flat.

Spoiler:

I didn´t have the feeling that Gravity was going much for realism or serious symbolism, but much for tension. I read somewhere that what Jaws did for water, Gravity did for space. I tend to agree. Gravity feels like the second half of Jaws. It uses a realistic setting, but throughout the story it isn´t ashamed of dropping realism for the sake of a good thrill, and it does so quite often. If one of the filmmakers would say they were serious with those symbolic moments (like that embryo moment) I would call him utterly pretentious, but in the film those scenes just looked terrific, and I didn´t see much need to interpret too much into them.

The score is nothing I imagine I would enjoy on CD, however throughout the film there were not many places where it didn´t do a great job. Technically it reminded me of Hans Zimmer´s best abstract works, like the Joker theme for example.

It´s going to be interesting to see how the fx are going to date. I remember seeing Event Horizon ages ago and loving the things floating in space, and then when I watched it again the other week I found the fx ridiculous.

One thing I have to say about the 3D is that I watched it both in 2D and 3D, because I had read that especially this fim was supposed to be something special in 3D, but, honest to G-d, I can´t see where 3D is supposed to be better, it´s just a waste of money.

Saw GRAVITY the other day. While it does have its moments, I found it a bore on the whole and all told didn't really enjoy it at all.

I saw it in 3D and felt that the 3D added nothing - it certainly didn't seem an integral part of the way that the story was told (unlike with LIFE OF PI) and didn't even strike me as particularly impressive on its own merits. I thought it was pretty flat and dull - rather like Bullock's performance.

And I hated the score. Incredibly redundant and overbearing. As Harms says, endless pounding and droning.

Incidentally, how do we know that

Spoiler:

Yeah, I was pretty underwhelmed. It's getting more praise than I think it deserves. It makes a very solid survival film in space, much like DIE HARD makes for a very solid action thriller, but there's nothing profound about it and when it attempted symbolism it was cringe-worthy.