Wednesday 28 May 2008

Revisiting the oldies



Since the mood swing hippiefits in my last post I haven't been able to make a single entry that could sum up everything properly. The fact is that I have been dealing various exam-related stuff that I engage in, apparently bent on some manner of self-punishment, and on the side I have been on a wild nostalgia trip to the cinema. Also, I have been wasting my time on various computer games and finished off the last few episodes of Lost (3rd season) including a not so bloody extravagant finale.
The other two seasons had a razor-sharp ending, but that was not good enough for the writers who instead went out of their way to go all noir and additionally thought it was a good idea to make one of the main characters look like Leonidas from 300. Which by and large made it immensely hard to concentrate because I half-expected him to exclaim "This is Sparta!" at any moment.
Hopefully in 4th season they might explain a bit about the fabled smoke monster that has so far acted mainly as a Pwn Ex Machina whenever some character needed to get offed. When they do come with an explanation I will end up ignoring it in favour of my theory that the monster is the spawn of the massive amounts of marijuana consumed by the writers of the series.

So anyway, what this entry was actually about is the fact that I have been watching Blade Runner and all four Indiana Jones movies recently. Watched the original trilogy in a row and since then I have seen the 4th twice. You can go on and on about how special effects tend to overshadow some more important elements in today's movies, but in a film like Indiana Jones that is more or less the whole point. The storylines in those features do not make any sense so the entire thing might as well be beefed up with some overwhelmingly silly CGI that reflects the general mood of the movie. It is by far the silliest of the four, and while the villains in the earlier movies, though still a bit comic-book-ish, actually managed to be genuinely sinister, the villains in the 4th feature are so stupidly exaggerated they are almost likeable.
But like we all know, in movies like these it is not a question of if the protagonist survives. It is always a question of how. We are already aware that he will defeat his enemies and get the girl in the end. I do not honestly know if the movie had been more effective without all those silly moments to counterpoint the gravity of each cliffhanger. I think it is spot on to spend a lot of resources on showing just how tough and badass Indiana Jones really is. Like the fact that he can, while trapped in a fridge, survive being flung over a long distance by a nuclear blast.
And the most miraculous thing happened... Shia LaBeouf was likeable!

I don't declare my approval just to seem anti-pretentious. It really depends on what expectations you have when you go in. I expected something entertaining, but not revolutionary. That is what I got.
The future isn't nice.

Blade Runner on the other hand is a slower and much less action-packed 2-hour noir fest. And in its restored version, I gotta say, it looks nearly every bit as smooth as a modern day movie. It is the shooting technique and general feel of the movie that really reveal its age. It cannot be watched without a good dose of patience. When I first watched a DVD version I bought I was not very impressed, but on a second viewing - and in the cinema at that - it all made much more sense. Harrison ford is the sort of actor where you often know what to expect, but in a noir feature like Blade Runner he is right at home. It is also a movie that benefits from the fact that the city in which it takes place becomes a character in its own right.
It might not be for everyone because the pacing is so different from that of modern blockbusters. But even if it isn't your genre, it might be worth checking out at least once in your lifetime.

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