I have been a managing and working with cross border teams for more than 19 years and helped companies find their international calling. In resent years I started working with Creative Companies building connections across the Americas.
It’s been a long time since I left a movie so disappointed as yesterday after seeing Prometheus. In the past movies like Matrix Reloaded, Transformers, the Star Wars Prequels left me a bit unsatisfied, but I still enjoyed some parts of them and let them be what they are. But yesterday, I was constantly bored by the movie, it had such high promises, I mean how can you go wrong with a prequel to one of the best horror movies ever made, from a director of classic epic movies and a great cast?. But in the end I felt the movie was such a mess, didn’t really felt any direction, the characters don't act logically, not even the robot. The music is distracting, the story and motivations that push the movie forward feel like an afterthought. Even trying to tie everything together to the Alien Franchise fails miserably.
The cinematography is the high point of the movie, as is almost always the case in Ridley Scott’s movies, so no surprise in this regard. The music is too distracting; in many places no music would have added to the tension of the moment. But when big horns and drums start playing in the background, it takes away from the spectator’s concentration.
The acting of Charlize Theron and Michael Fassbender are very good, even though the characters really don’t have clear purposes. This is also the case of the hero, Noomi Rapace, whose performance is adequate but everyone else steals her thunder. Why should we care for her if she doesn't even seem to be in the same room with everyone else?
In the end I think all the problems I saw in the movie, besides the music, are related to bad scriptwriting. If the conflicts, motivations or actions are not clear, everything else will fail to deliver; this was also the case in the Star Wars prequels, and Matrix Sequels. You can have a richly and interesting universe, but is the people that inhabit it that keep us coming back for more.
http://www.projectprometheus.com/ 20th Century-Fox presents a film directed by Ridley Scott. Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. Running time: 124 minutes.
Snow White and the Huntsman is a new version of the classical fairy tale by the Brother's Grimm. It is the second movie this summer based on the titular character, and it can be classified as a medieval dark fantasy. Kristen Stewart plays Snow White presenting a character very empty in a world around her that is pushing, and saving her at every time. If we take into account that she has been imprisoned for a decade then we can understand why she doesn't seem to have any real personality. Something clear is that she just have the knowledge that she is the only one that can take back her kingdom from the bad queen, but she doesn't know how or why would she have such a knowledge?. In this regard the flatness in Stewart's performance is just what is needed. Completely opposite to Snow White is Charlize Theron's interpretation of the witch queen, Ravenna, and Chris Hemsworth as the huntsman, they are the real stars of the movie, and are the ones driving around Snow White's actions putting the plot in motion. I have to admit that Stewart's acting in this movie reminded me a lot of the performance of Keanu Reeves in the first Matrix movie. He was just a puppet between the bad and the good and was just reacting to the strange things happening around him.
As I mentioned earlier, the characters played by Theron and Hemsworth have more depth than the world around them even though we do not get much details in their past we do feel the weight they carry with them.
The movie is beautifully shot and the world has a lot of detail in the setting, everything looks like belongs in the dark ages , people are dirty, without obvious makeup, there are no glass bottles for example, and the main characters do get more filthy after the time they spent roaming the country side, lord of the rings style, even the nails have dirt under them and when people camp outside, they will wake up with dirt on they're faces and their hair messy. The only exception to this rule is the queen that is supposed to look so different, with such much beauty and well kept, compared to to the rest of the world around her do to her magic abilities.
In the end the movie is a good experience, it definitely could be shorter and it does feel like it takes too much elements from other movies like Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Princess Mononoke and Twilight, among others. I recommend it and is much better than other efforts at retelling classic fairy tales like Mirror Mirror this summer and Alice in Wonderland of last year.
Other Snow White that is popular right know is the retelling of the character and other fairy tales characters in the television series "Once Upon a Time", the series has a very mediocre execution in an interesting premise and compelling story. Some characters are well developed and have lots of background story, but some can be so flat that drag the story and make some episodes very boring: for example Snow White of the fairy tales land is interesting and has an appealing arch, while the modern counterpart just seems flat in comparison. I guess its part of the supposed curse over the land that has trapped everyone, but while other characters seem to evolve and change she is always the same flat person. Much like the interpretation of Stewart in the movie Snow White and the Huntsman.
I want to share this Polygon(The Verge) made video, of a brief history of "console" videogames, I'm sad there is no love for pc games, but still I think is a great effort and has amazing editing.
Once upon a time(1995 to be more precise) a young music video director, had the opportunity to apply its own distinctive style to big action motion pictures, he received the backing of major movies studios like Columbia, Universal and Buena Vista, and had the support of the biggest producer of blockbusters at the time (Jerry Bruckheimer). Right to this point, it’s the story of many directors, some of them improve on their technique and evolve from the video type of film making, others vanish again in anonymity and other can become one of the biggest money makers in the business, making blockbuster after blockbuster. One of these cases is Michael Bay, he sure has a distinctive style and has become one of the biggest money makers in the business, driving long lines of people to see his movies, he has only made 9 movies, and has an average of 205 million in domestic gross, all of his movies has grossed well above 100 million worldwide, and his last movie, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, grossed 1 billion USD worldwide.
So why do I hate his movies so much? In my personal opinion some of the worst movies ever made, are the Transformers trilogy by Michael Bay, I don't think those are the worst movies ever by any means, but I hate them as storytelling vehicles, what they represent, the style, the action, the dialogue, the love interest and almost everything in these movies I cannot tolerate. I personally think is the man on the director´s chair to blame, so that is why I'm going to tell you why I hate his movies so much, because my revulsion of his movies, is that they all have the same problems, in hind sight I cannot seem to find redeeming qualities after seeing the Transformers Trilogy and Armageddon, they are the ultimate representation of Bayism exaggeration. Even the Rock, a Movie I really liked when I first saw it in theaters now seems convoluted, overacted and too much over the top and with obvious plot holes, that I don’t even like it now, in the end he even ruined my fond memories of his best movies.
I'm going to organize the list of movies from the worst of the worst to the not so bad movies.
1. Most hated movie: Armageddon(1998), Bay’s third movie, I was eager to see this movie, when I went to see it with my friends, I mean what could go wrong after The Rock?. This movie was a terrible experience for me, I thought it looked like a Coca Cola commercial, it was too long, the acting was terrible, convoluted, over dramatic exposition in every little detail without any emotional payback, it was obvious for me that this was the beginning of the end of my appreciation of Michael bay. And I even tough the other asteroid movie of the year was better than this, I cannot even start to watch this movie on Tv without flinching in my sit, and changing the channel.
2. Cool robots, too bad for the rest: Transformers Trilogy(2007, 2009 and 2011), I really had high hopes for these movies, He was coming from making The Islad, that didn’t seem so bad at the moment, there was somewhat good buzz from critics, but in the end the first movie was kind of interesting, and a good looking movie with good action set pieces, although bad dialogue and acting on the human and robotic characters. But the next two movies were a mess, not only were the next two movies more over the top in the action set pieces department, they were definitely terrible acted, everyone was annoying, I really can’t find any redeeming qualities in this movies, and why the hell everyone screams all the f… time?, screaming doesn't makes anything more dramatic!
3. Most racist characters in a movie after transformers, Bad Boys 1(1995) and Bad Boys 2(2003), the first movie of Michael Bay, introduced Will Smith as an action star, it was kind of entertaining, and at first the screaming of every line of dialogue didn't seem so annoying and it was kind of funny. In the second movie, it the screaming part, became really annoying, the action and the movie didn't make any sense, and what was supposed to be the funny scenes with Martin Lawrence, were not really that funny (not that in the first one were funny at all), and did I mention that both movies are racist to every people in the planet, Latinos, Caucasians, Afroamericans, and to boot it sexist as well?
4. Is it bad?, Pearl Harbor(2001), my only real complain with this movie is that is too long, is seems more like a miniseries that one movie, it spends to much time exposing a love triangle, that no one really cares about, but I could watch it again if its on TV. Besides, is such a piece of American nationalism that is hard to criticize from my point of view.
5. Is not from Michael Bay?, Con Air, it certainly fooled me.
6. Good at first, and now… : The Island(2005) and The Rock(1996). At first I enjoyed both movies a lot, now I think they are ok efforts from the director, it has some interesting concepts, cool action pieces that at least made sense in the context of the movie, but again the director takes too much time resolving conflict in the history structure, tells us stuff that we don’t need to know and that really don’t matter to the history, there are just scenes for the sake of it. These movies I can still watch on TV, I just wish there was a fast forward on the control that worked
Here is a link of the most common 7 cliches used in Michael Bay’s Movies, I will add the spinning camera around the characters with they’re mouth open!
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