Letters to the Editor
-
Good Cinematography is Dead
Say for Janusz Kamimski and Lance Acord, the art of tweaking the emotions of audiences through brilliant cinematography seems dead. Directors and DP's alike have too many tools to not try something. Usually the result is a perverted style that looks neither original or necessarily helpful to the film. And all too often the film looks, as you mentioned, painted or animated without reason.
Take Soderberg for example. He used to use a straightforward, traditional approach (Sex Lies & Videotape) depending on angles, perfectly timed movement and close ups. The subtle style he created added immense tension without the viewer even noticing.
Flash forward to Traffic and K-Street. Both leaned so heavily on effected color schemes and pointless handhelds that the former succeeded in spite of the stylistic mistakes, while the latter failed miserably.
With so many color altering techniques, both in camera and in edit, DP's don't need to depend any longer on traditional tools of the craft - light trucks and available light - and rarely does the environment in which the story takes place mean anything (Acord's stunning Lost in Translation being the most recent exception). DP's can predetermine how dark a city will look, or how sunny it will be. In the end, you get films like Ocean's 11 and its odd yellow hue, for no discernable reason whatsoever.
Directors like Rodriguez, Tarentino, and even Lucas have gotten away from the traditional techniques that made their films great to look at in the first place. The end result is most films today look like some bastardized Michael Bay concoction that would make Lazlo Kovacks puke in his grave.
-
Two exceptions re thrillers and cinematography:
No good thrillers these days - I know it was a while ago but I've only just seen it: Unfaithful, an Adrian Lyne film. Looks great, is great.
No good cinematography - how about Collateral? That was stunning - don't know who the DP was. Also some very good looking low budgeters lately like 'Friends with Money' which I think might have been even shot on digital. And then there's HBO - those last episodes of Sex and the City shot in Paris - BEAUTIFUL cinematography. I can vividly remember some of the set ups as I sit here: Carrie running through Paris at night, the street lights blinding the lens. Carrie sitting in a cake shop lonely and stuffing her face. All of it gorgeous looking.
-
What? no jittery hand held cell phone camera?
No underlit over contrasted Parkinson's disease Blair Witch film school horseshit? No out of focus wrong depth of field solarized too blue too orange crap from "Traffic"? Cmon you're not even trying if you can't push that stupid 'immediacy' shit in our faces. Even the tools that grind out Friday Night Lights like burritos every week can do that.
Seriously, that is killing movies. Killing them goddamn dead. I'm not paying 11 bucks to see that you've taken a scene and turned it into a constantly moving picture of the fucking floor.
-
Who?
Then again, most of us who go to the movies in the early 21st century have learned to suspend our disbelief to Reed Rogers-like proportions.
Who's Reed Rogers? If you're talking about The Fantastic Four's Mister Fantastic, that's Reed Richards, and then the metaphor should probably be "stretch our disbelief", which isn't even an idiom.
I hate to be such a nit-picker but that's some strained writing you got there, and why aren't there any copy-editors at Salon?.
-
The Eyes of Laura Mars
Still one of my favorite thrillers for the ways in which it charts a world of surface glamor that turns deadly. Style becomes claustrophobic, and there's no better example than when Laura (Faye Dunaway) is struggling down the street swathed in more shawls than one person could possibly manage to keep on. Other great moment: the "Let's All Chant" photo shoot. Blessed with great performances by Raoul Julia and Tommie Lee Jones, "Laura Mars" is still dense and rich and shocking--an amazing time capsule.