Just watched The Lives Of Others on Sky HD. Already seen it last year but still gripping, grim though!!!

Yeah Be Kind Rewind was alright, not as good as I'd hoped it be but a great idea behind the film.

Oh and I watched Hellraiser for the first time the other night and wow, that film is INSANE!

Hellraiser left me disturbed for two reasons: 1. The subject matter is brutal, although literally demonizing BDS&M as a metaphor is a cheap tool for a scare. 2. The fact that there were no CGI effects used made it more real than I ever wanted it to be. After watching it I was left with this nausea that took hours to quell. But man, the makeup and effects were top notch for 1987.

Quick trivia for Hellraiser:

Many viewers have commented about the poor quality of the FX at the end of the movie. Clive Barker has explained that, due to a very limited budget, there was no money left to have the FX done professionally after the primary filming. Instead, Barker and a "Greek guy" animated these scenes by hand over a single weekend. Barker has also commented that he thinks the FX turned out very well considering the amount of alcohol the two consumed that weekend.

I'm not a big fan of CGI effects in films, I miss seeing the creativity of artists creating models and using make up, animatronics and stop animation. It adds an extra element of dedication and it feels like the people making the film have really put their heart and soul into it.

Just watched The Mist (2007). It's a great concept, but I think it could have been done a LOT better. Saying that though, it's still worth a watch.

I like CGI if it is done well. As in, WETA well... you know, like the WETA crew that brought to life all the amazing eye candy in Lord Of The Rings. The balance between what is real and what isn't as it pertains to the Lord of the Rings trilogy was nothing short of perfection. Honestly, it's some of the best special effects I've ever seen and given how far state of the art technology has come since the first Lord of the Rings was made - the film still looks amazing fresh and real to the eye. Though it goes without saying there comes a point where CGI - no matter how amazing and state of the art it is - is overkill. Which results in soulless scenery or worse, soulless characters that just look a bit meh. See I Am Legend which is a perfect example of a decent attempt at CGI gone completely wrong some ways. It just looked and felt lazy. Even WETA were guilty of this with The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe. Amazing to look at the first time but on more than 1 or 2 viewings, something just falls flat. Or maybe it's just me not being a huge sucker for talking animals or something.

A good example of CGI overuse in the scenery aspect would be the shamefully lackluster Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It was the first film to be entirely filmed using green screens instead of actual scenery (or matte paintings). Yet at the same time, a shining example of fantastic use of green screens is Sin City. But maybe it was the gritty context of the story along with the comic book feel that made teh CGI work for Sin City but fall flat on that Skycaptain flick.

There is definitely a certain element and dedication to putting together effects by hand that can't be acheived through computerized fx. Stop motion animation is and always will be amazing. Even a comedy show like Robot Chicken with it's short segments of stop motion animation takes weeks and weeks to make. Clash of the Titans was pretty kick ass when it first came out (I remember!!) and even though it looks incredibly dated nowadays, Medusa still looks creepy as fuck. Blade Runner... 'nuff said... Team America, even if Matt Stone and Trey Parker aren't your comical cup of tea, was still brilliantly and painstakingly well done as everything was created by hand using whatever objects were lying around from currency to kitchen strainers. There's also an organic and almost tangible feel when effects are created by hand giving even the most inanimate of objects - such as background scenery, space crafts, minuatures of buildings etc - character and depth that just can't quite be re-created in the same sense through CGI.

Damn. I could talk about this stuff for hours!

Anyway. In that big mess I wrote up there I forgot to mention I re-watched Master and Commander last night. One thing I noticed the first time around and revisited last night was how incredible the sound was - like you're right there in the thick of everything. Whoever was the director of sound for that movie did a fantastic job. Definitely made to be watched on a home theater system (and the home theater system doesn't even have to be fancy).

As long as CGI movies have a great story and interesting characters, i'm fine. But CGI should never be used as a crutch for bad acting and storytelling!

good idea...Jurassic park

bad idea....Starship Troopers

I actually enjoyed Starship Troopers as an entertaining, gooey gorey shoot-em-up sci fi popcorn flick. Which was all it was meant to be ("Do Your Part" tongue in cheek pseudo political commentary aside). My husband's read the book which was relatively dead serious, a few times. He's a sci fi writer and Robert Heinlein junkie so he's more of an authority than I am but the flick was a looooooooose adaptation of the book according to him.

Jurassic Park "wowed" me on the big screen when it was in theaters, but that movie did not age well. But a couple years after the fact, Jurassic Park looked and felt awfully dated. Some good scenes but I really couldn't be bothered to watch again although I was forced to when my son had a brief infatuation with dinosaurs about 8 years ago. I can say for sure that the book is a thousand times better!

Oh, speaking of Starship Troopers... a lot of it was filmed in Orange County - Irvine, to be exact. And there was a big open casting call advertised in the paper where you could sign up to be an extra in the film. It would've been fun to do, just for shits and giggles, but we never got around to signing up.

For some reason I liked Starship Troopers too. Same thing with 5th Element. Although, Milla Jovovich has something to do with that... :blush:

[addimage]http://api.ning.com/.../multipass1.jpg[/addimage]

Another weird Sci Fi flick from the 80's I use to watch as kid, that they just showed on HBO, is The Last Star Fighter.

oh yeah, and this one is for Iggy

http://multifry.ytmnd.com/

I agree with your CGI post Whirly, CGI does have its amazing moment like with LOTR and many other films. I remember reading that Samuel L Jackson refuses to work with green screens because how can you properly react to a green screen? I think that comes across, if you're being chased by a green sheet of material rather than an animatronic dinosaur. Oh and the CGI in I Am Legend looked about 5 years old.

I loved Starship Troopers :D the sequel was SO bad, it was like a school play. Oh and they're making a third film :P

Here is something I'm trully exited about, trailer new today:

http://www.youtube.com/v/JboQmDIdKWs

A. The Mist, if I may humbly say so, was pretty amazing for a horror flick. I wasn't expecting much, but I know that I enjoyed it solely because it's one of the most emotionally sadistic films toward the viewer I've seen, possibly ever. Plus all the acting was above par, even the smallest parts.

B. Starship Troopers is both amazing and bad. It's amazingly bad, and pretty amazing. Heehee...

Max Payne the movie well i never.... I really enjoyed the game and pretty much spent nearly a full weekend playing it as it had me gripped.

Oh yeah--Sin City was AMAZING! I forgot to mention that when seeing all those CGI posts.

I think Sin City worked because it was recreating the graphic novel. The story was already set in those tones, so no one -expected- it to be lifelike and real. Its style and tone were set in the original "cartoonish" subject matter, so the leap to CGI was actually an improvement.

The mist is possibly one of the worst films i have ever seen. It really is up there with another stephen king stinker "dreamcatcher". Only good thing about it was the ending as it made me laugh

^What?! The ending is no laughing matter! it's mental, but aparently not the same ending as in the book. I agree it's not great, but the worst film ever? That's an extreme view.

Mona Sax is going to be played by that woman from That 70's Show who plays Jackie, and I think is the voice of Meg in Family Guy. Doesn't really fit the Mona Sax image imo. Angelina Jolie would have been perfect. She is perfect. I love her.

There is only 2 films i have ever wanted to walk out of cinema from and the mist was one of them along with one of the batman films (the one with arnie and george clooney). I think the worst film i have ever seen though is Leprechaun in the hood staring ice-t. We have tried to watch that film 3 times and it always gets turned off.

Wanted is a good flick.

@Jay-C - Dreamcatcher is bad, indeed; the storyline is ridiculous, starting with the first signs of alien infestations as flatulence. The characters were unbelievable, the tone was inconsistent, and it was obvious that the filmmakers started making a serious science fiction film, but then ended up trying to make something with a more cheesy "splat-stick" kind of feel to it. And also, the casting of Morgan Freeman as the general was a bad choice--it just didn't work.

The Mist, on the other hand, is arguably one of the best short works of Stephen King. The film more closely stuck to the storyline, but turned the story into one of the darkest narratives I've ever seen. I think the film works brilliantly on two levels as a horror film--both as a classic "creature" film, and a focus on the horror of human behavior. Every part is well acted, even those who only have a moment or two on screen, and the result is that it leaves you in one of the darkest places known to humankind.

It's not technical perfection in terms of film making, but the special effects are mostly good; and I can even say that only in one scene were they actually bad.

Why did you hate it so much?