_Gravity_, the new Alfonso Cuaron sci-fi flick

As opposed to his old one:

Robert Downey Jr. is negotiating a deal to star in Gravity, the 3D space film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures will co-finance.

Cuaron wrote the script with his son, Jonas.

Downey will play the leader of a team posted at a remote space station. While he and a female colleague are traveling outside the space station, the other team members are decimated by debris from an exploded satellite.

The script had been developed originally at Universal with the intention of having Angelina Jolie play the female role. Much of the film is devoted to her struggle to get back to Earth and her daughter. Jolie passed around the time Universal cut it loose. Downey was drawn to the chance to work wtih Cuaron, the director of Children of Men and Y tu mama tambien.

I can actually see this working out really well in 3D

this is happening

http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2010/06/alfonso-cuarons-gravity-is-filming-this.html#more

premise doesn't sound very interesting, but i'm a big fan of both cuarón and downey (and sci-fi anything, and 3D anything), so...

Will watch for sure.

:D

love that this dude is keeping on with the sci-fi

http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/angelina-jolie-pass-puts-gravity-in-shaky-orbit-for-warner-bros/#more-64414

ah ffs

The studio needs an actress who can hold the screen and draw an audience to an $80 million film.

and jolie is the ONLY BROAD in all hollywood who can do this? kind of depressing

Any more info on this?

this is the last thing i saw - http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/12/george_clooney_will_orbit_sand.html

This is, in fact, happening.

A little something:

“Instead of trying to create real people and what they’re doing, let’s turn it around and create almost an entirely animated film and then backwards engineer the people into that film,” he explained. “As a matter of fact, let’s not even engineer the people into the film, let’s engineer their faces. So you’ve got these little faces inside these little helmets. But there was a big hiccup that we came to I didn’t realize until later, which was that we began building it as an animated film and Alfonso had an idea that he wanted the shots to be incredibly long, and I said, ‘How long?’ And he said he wanted the first shot to be really long. And I said, ‘You mean, 40 seconds?’ ‘No, 17 minutes.’ So it ends up the film only has 156 shots in the entire two-hour movie, many of them six, eight, 10 minutes long."

And yes, trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIzxwIJVdus

what a shitty trailer

yeah, terrible

lol so basically nothing is done yet

that is not a real trailer

horrible trailer, wont see the movie

Trailer's in blurry 3-D, right? Nice teaser before Titans et al.

ha. i am very much looking forward to this. is the reason he hasn't made a feature since 2008 b/c he was trying to get this funded?

Cuaron should have taken trailer lessons from whomever cut "Prometheus."

Sandra Bullock? Oh, fuck.

horrible trailer, wont see the movie

― max

what a tragedy for trailers everywhere

i think it's funny that he's the visionary director of children of men and..... one of 27 interchangeable harry potter movies (i know I know, his is a little different, still)

from the visionary director of great expectations

from the visionary director of that subtitled movie that you rented because you heard there was a threesome in it

We need a trailer in twenty minutes! Here's some stock footage of the Space Shuttle.

Horrible trailer, will definitely see the movie anyway.

will prob never watch a trailer again tbh

i actually blinded myself after seeing that trailer

yet by muscle memory, can still post to ilx

rip trailers

http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh55/therealtsumi88/temp/MrT-SingleTear.gif

This is, in fact, happening.

A little something:

“Instead of trying to create real people and what they’re doing, let’s turn it around and create almost an entirely animated film and then backwards engineer the people into that film,” he explained. “As a matter of fact, let’s not even engineer the people into the film, let’s engineer their faces. So you’ve got these little faces inside these little helmets. But there was a big hiccup that we came to I didn’t realize until later, which was that we began building it as an animated film and Alfonso had an idea that he wanted the shots to be incredibly long, and I said, ‘How long?’ And he said he wanted the first shot to be really long. And I said, ‘You mean, 40 seconds?’ ‘No, 17 minutes.’ So it ends up the film only has 156 shots in the entire two-hour movie, many of them six, eight, 10 minutes long."
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, April 12, 2012 10:54 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i read a script review of it a couple years ago where the reviewer guessed that the movie was intended to be shot in one take. it's not said explicitly in the script but it all takes place in real time and seems plausible for cuaron

huh. I want to be excited about this.

Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity Finally Has Its Release Date
Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, which we've been dreaming about since maybe before 2006's Children of Men, is now set for Oct. 4, 2013. Originally slated for November 2012, it stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts stranded in space. It's also reported to have an uninterrupted twenty-minute opening scene and as much digital work as Avatar.
..

sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufsrgE0BYf0

fuck you

i was just coming here to post that

http://i.imgur.com/J8K3L.jpg

SANDRA BULLOCK SPINNING AND GRABBING AT AIR THE MOVIE

sandarooni

spiegel im spiegel: got something in my eye. earth from space: gonna need a tissue here. loss of loved one: oh shit gimme the whole box.

that looks nuts

Anyway NERDS

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/a-quick-look-at-the-physics-in-the-gravity-trailer/

no mention of the SOUND IN SPACE?!?!

http://i.imgur.com/3FyDnY7.png

looks like... this 'science fiction' movie is more 'fiction' than 'science.' https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9627011/photos/userArmsCrossed.gif

sound in space bugged me a little tbh, but it'll probably work in the movie

That battle has been lost, moviewise. Bigger louder grosser.

ya this movie looks like a really gross-out fest!!!

well I expect I will be at least as disappointed in it as George Clooney is in Democrats who are disappointed in Obama.

you should be a politician morbs, you really are skilled at finding a way to divert literally any topic to your relentless messaging

s1ocki, c'mon. You know 'grosser' had meaning before Gang Apatow.

You mean like the absence of cigarette smoking in period films, that kind of relentless PC Democratic messaging?

http://jmmnewaov2.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/good-night-and-good-luck-immagini-dal-film-3.jpg

couldn't be made today

http://pbenjay.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/don-draper-brown-suit-smoking.jpg

fuck TV

http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/

also maybe stop being such an asshole, pretty please.

When you resort to direct insult that's your way of saying you're wrong right

no and I am dropping the cigarette discussion as I already have cancer

saw the trailer in 3D, excellent

feel like ppl complaining about there being sound in space or not getting the exact orbital height right are, idk, not seeing the forest. question: did the trailer look sick as hell? answer: yes

alright then

ive never in my life heard an audience laugh as hard at a 'serious' trailer as they did at this one. it was uproarious. the laughter actually carried into the next trailer

It doesn't help that the premise is "George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are stuck out in space and might die," because then you imagine all the other stars you hope suffer similar fates.

I find that trailer totally unsettling! And no one laughed in my theater.

i feel like it would be more unsettling/convincing in the theater but you never know

so what is this movie about anyway? is it as minimalist as ned's description makes it sound?

i think so! isnt it in real time?

its basically apollo 13 in space.

i think the movie looks incred, i guess it was the money shot right before the movie's title of sandra wiggling her fingers reaching for a bar to hold onto that set them off. i didnt really get it

like one person burst into laughter and then the whole theater joined her

its basically apollo 13 in space.

You sarcastic SOB, I'm dying here.

I really can't figure it out. That trailer has gotten laughter every. single. time.

it's more like Open Water in space, ja?

with more christ figures obv

Needs space sharks

and space anemones

saw the very promising preview for this in front of pacific rim. the plot description sounded dull, but the preview makes it out to be a white-knuckle suspense flick, woman against the void. the deep space stuff looks breathtaking in 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4pcg7bXgmU

Another Cuaron single shot action sequence. It's (a) so cool and (b) terrifying and (c) troubling because I hope all the movie's best parts aren't being wasted on youtube.

Yeah, it's an astonishing clip, but I think I'm going to have to be done watching any pre-release footage for this one.

tbh i was put off by how brittle the CG felt

that trailer looks siiiiiiiiiick

also bear in mind the final CGI will prob look better

Not going to watch this one, but for those of you include to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV-UEca2W9U

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/08/gravity-reviews-venice-are-out-world/68810/

exciting!

The guy's pretty much only made good, good looking movies, so there is no reason to believe this one won't be good and good looking, too.

I think you're forgetting the horrific horny-teenager road movie

and possibly Great Ethanhawktations

Eh, they were OK. And certainly they looked good!

Kinda sold now. (Yeah, io9, but it's the details about Bullock's character that are key.)

http://io9.com/weve-seen-gravity-and-its-even-better-than-wed-hoped-1269054082

there was a very big line for this at tiff today. i stood it in a while and then couldnt handle the crowds.

cool story right

Screening it in 12 days. Kinda can't wait.

i get irritated when critics use a shot's length to suggest how the director is a genius. "the opening shot of this film is 13 minutes long--that's 5 minutes longer than the opening shot of touch of evil. ergo, alfonso cuaron is approximately 63% more of a genius than orson welles!"

that said i will see the hell out of this.

particularly when a shot has elements that are almost entirely CGI

i trace it back to the steadicam wars in the 1980s

"This upcoming movie consists of a single scene shot via webcam of an animator trying to perfect one spinning piece of space station wreckage. The animator moves from despair, rapture, pain and glory in this epic struggle of the human soul. Also starring Kevin Smith as The One Guy."

la ronde opening shot >>> touch of evil opening shot

According to my Letterboxd feed, some of the snobbiest corners of my constituency hate the holy everloving shit out of this.

surely you're not zurprized (and I'm getting a bad feeling, from semi-spoiler's in yesterday's NYT Bullock interview).

what is lettrboxd or shouldn't I ask?

why don't you guys go do something else instead of reading everything about this movie so you are already sick of it before you see it?

High Fidelity-style list repository for cinegeeks

xp

That's all anyone ever does with these Important Autumn Studio Movies anymore.

Only took note of the ratings. Have mostly been avoiding prerelease coverage of this one.

That's all anyone ever does I ever do with these Important Autumn Studio Movies anymore.

fixed

stop projecting

Snobs be damned.

This = Oh. My. God.

i dont care abt clooney or bullock but regardless i want to see this vvv much

cuaron + space

i mean

This = Oh. My. God.

Properly excited now.

Loathe Bullock but still REALLY want to see this.

im always completely perplexed when anyone says they cant stand sandy... shes a freakin delight and a half

yeah wtf. what's not to like?

she speaks german.

every movie she's ever been in has been terrible

so there's that

watched a commercial for this with my wife, who was immediately like "FUCK NO I CANNOT WATCH THAT I WILL HAVE A HEART ATTACK AND DIE"

so I will probably be going to it solo, because I do not want her to have a heart attack and die

xp Can't say that anymore.

people are probably jelly that she married that biker dude

xp Can't say that anymore.

yeah I am interested in seeing this

every movie she's ever been in has been terrible

Hey now, the first Miss Congeniality is really good!

Demolition Man was awesome.

no

these opinions are wrong

^ looks like somebody used the wrong seashell

Looking through her filmography at the moment:

A Time to Kill is good, but hardly because of her.
I already stated my enjoyment of Miss Congeniality, but that's only partly because of her. The supporting cast is great.
I suspect I'd like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but I have not seen it.

Yeah, the rest either is or looks like garbage.

Bring on Gravity, though!

The Net is funny in a lol 90s kind of way.

The Net is one of the funniest thrillers ever

A Time to Kill is good

No.

Yes they deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell!

shakey i thought you loved crash, 'really opened my eyes' iirc

is that a joke

uh 'teurist I avoid reading anything about these Big Year-End Movies as much as i fucking can, motherfucker

I have only seen Ms Bullock in Speed, The Net, Crash

downward spiral

Wow, I never did notice that, yikes, she's really never been in a good movie, has she? I guess "Speed" is as good as it gets. "28 Days" was OK, I recall, maybe, but I could be wrong. Probably!

Crash would be just about anyone's rock bottom.

the only thing i've gotten from the trailers is that apparently dying in space doesn't scare me

yikes, she's really never been in a good movie, has she?

Demolition Man

xpost You should be an astronaut!

The spectacle is really too overwhelming to ever allow the isolation of that prospect to really sink in, admittedly. But it's still gripping.

i'll kinda rep for 28 days

Eric,

Which format did you get to see?

3D. It wasn't an IMAX-sized screen, but they touted Dolby Atmos audio.

every movie she's ever been in has been terrible

― what's up ugly girls? (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, September 20, 2013 12:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

its weird to me when ppl act like actors are the movies they're in... and then if they're in some good movies then suddenly they're better more interesting people who are treated like they just gained interior lives & intelligence (u see this w/mcconaughey & tatum recently)

Speed's a masterpiece though

why do they blow up a whole plane in speed. keanu shd point that thing at a fucken fence or shit before he gets off

Can't even begin to list how many times some of my favorite performances have been in some of the worst movies.

but you LIKE bad movies!

anyway my impression is that SB's performance here is a physical one, ie not so much talking in the last 2/3?

its weird to me when ppl act like actors are the movies they're in... and then if they're in some good movies then suddenly they're better more interesting people who are treated like they just gained interior lives & intelligence

I don't care about actors-as-people, I care about what's onscreen. This doesn't preclude actors from giving good performances in bad films (Michael Shannon in that Runaways movie springs to mind, there are tons of others).

I wd rep for Murder by Numbers

liked her fine in speed & demolition man, enjoyed 28 days and murder by numbers, but not particularly because of her performance. haven't seen the overwhelming majority of her star vehicles, though.

actually kind of crazy how few of her big movies i've seen - of the 15 movies she's in that made over $50m, i've only seen speed, demo man and crash. the blind side, the proposal, the heat, a time to kill, miss congeniality, two weeks notice, while you were sleeping, divine secrets of the ya-ya sisterhood, hope floats, forces of nature, the lake house, the net? ain't seen any. I'm under the impression her deal is "julia roberts' neurotic little sister" but that's from pretty small sample

ha older sister, i just discovered - by four years!

I was gonna say

You really should see The Net just for the lols.

julia hitting the big time a few years earlier threw me off

i did see speed 2, which i mostly remember for when they destroy an entire coastal town to save like 8 people left on the cruise ship, and later willem dafoe grabs bullock before escaping, basically admitting it's just so jason patric has a reason to kill him

So the reviews are good.

I liked Bullock in Speed and the terrible Bogdanovich movie about country music up and and comers starring River Phoenix.

The poster should say: "Hell! Even Eric H called it a 'tremendous visual spectacle'!"

I gotta say: I'm most excited by the length (90 min).

Oo-er

In the past, "tremendous visual spectacle" has usually pulled my trigger more often than not.

Briefly considered attending the 10pm screening tonight. Fortunately, the Bills/Browns game is pretty good.

(Still plan to go this weekend. I can't remember the last time I saw something on opening weekend.)

yeah I'm kinda wanting to see it this weekend too! dunno if I can swing it but gah I need to see this

9:30 am IMAX3D showing rn. I'm pumped

I know of two local critics here who went to the 2nd press screening so they could see it again!

Only reason I didn't ask myself was because I thought I'd be turned down.

You're in for some awful grief, Eric.

So long as it's not dreadful grief.

holy shit

Yup.

prob see this Columbus Day

nice Michael Snow ref, dude, but i bet the grief will come from Existimatum.

i take it the 3D is essential

xp already did. 3 stars.

But it's cool. I think I finally "get" that site after checking out some of the reviews that have gotten perfect and dismal scores.

I would argue that even more essential than the 3-D is to go to a place with a top-notch sound system; Dolby Atmos is I guess the preferred route.

i was sweating

Yeah, I think I pitted out 3 or 4 times.

haha, do they have "Atmos" posted on the box office at Lincoln Square? :p

I would read the Rex Reed review cept for the spoilers.

Gonna see this tomorrow, I hope. Tupelo movie crowds are hard to predict.

honestly left the theater feeling more shaken than the time i rode the Big Drop amusement park ride or w/e, the one that takes you up about 2-300 feet and drops you straight down. there's a reason i have never voluntarily got on a rollercoaster

my viewing tips: as big a screen as possible. get there early, find the seat where the screen fills your entire field of view. during previews you'll think you're too close but you won't be for the movie.

ok, so my objections will prob be similar to being scared in a horror movie: I DON'T ENJOY THIS.

it's not the same as a horror movie, don't worry

no, closer to thrill rides WHICH I HATE

they really like hitting you with that "thesaurus," very juvenile, Eric

well it's like Apollo 13: The Ride

I'm sorry the English language has so many words.

I sure hope you don't go see this film, Morbs.

LOL, someone from Dissolve said they've been calling it Movie: The Ride.

disgusting

when's the countdown to when we can start talking about this movie, spoilers, etc.? let me set my Mission Timer Watch.

Let us get through the weekend, at least.

tbh Morbs, I have no doubt in my mind this is not your kind of movie.

yes sure EVERYBODY sees Big Movies on the almighty opening weekend

really MUST quit film criticism

Yeah, someone said I spoiled in my review at S1ant because, afaict, I said that the movie had final scenes.

Plz no spoilers until at least Monday. I don't know which screening I'm going to this weekend, but I'll get to one of them.

i'm giving my students extra credit if they write to me about it

how full was theater at 9:30, dayo?

not very, this was at amc on 34th

ah

This skeptical review is pretty good for one that I can't get on board with: http://cinema-scope.com/currency/ladies-gentlemen-floating-space-alfonso-cuarons-gravity/

But this ...

Cuarón, however, who has previously played at technocratic ruthlessness—as in Children of Men’s (2006) various brute-force money shots—is ultimately a soft touch.

More tech-obsessed directors should try combine softness and hardness as well as Cuarón.

try combining

yea i saw in imax also; its impressive for sure but idk im not seeing this again or w/e

p cool they sent sandy to space

More tech-obsessed directors should try combine softness and hardness as well as Cuarón.

as evinced by casting

http://images.contactmusic.com/newsimages/gael_garcia_bernal_1185859.jpg

they're not playing this at the air and space museum :(

if i'm going to pay for a movie in imax i'd like it to not be one of these rinky dink amc fakes

So this was good. I haven't felt so nauseated since riding Body Wars in '89.

yeah, this was quite a ride. i was tense and, as they say, "riveted" pretty much throughout. wasn't even too put off by the push toward poignancy and message. more surprising still, sandra bullock is damn near great in it. who knew?

eh Cuaron could have cast Paul Walker and Tori Spelling. Bravado and tears are the two easiest tricks in the acting repertoire.

fair enough, but i was (perhaps easily) impressed. moreso because i've never particularly cared for her. action & suspense carry the film, but she does her bit.

I wasn't expecting this to be such a Sandra Bullock movie. Some might laugh at me for saying that.

Films which achieve such levels of convincing physical realism, but have plots which are increasingly and utterly unfeasible - well they'd better have a great point to make other than the ride, cause its difficult not to take the attack on your intelligence personally. After Children of Men I was hoping for more than an amazing, stupid ride. But I will see this again before it leaves the theater.

In SF the main Atmos theatre is Metreon auditorium 13. Buy tickets for the 3D ETX showing. (Full disclosure, I contribute on Atmos, and I have to say this was the first film that really finally took full advantage of the format from the opening straight through to the credits; all the sounds are always moving, from any individual voice or sound to each instrument in the score, so it made for extra immersive fun.)

blech, the only theater in nyc that i can reliably find that is playing this w/ atmos is located in times square, and tickets are $20+

I just had to pay $20 to see it tonight in IMAX. At this point, I only go to the theater about once a year, so I didn't mind splurging.

I'm trying to persuade my bf to see this tonight but he says that the preview reminded him of the film-within-a-film in Notting Hill (Julia Roberts playing an astronaut) and he just can't do it :(

This was really good, visually astonishing. Cuarón is the star of the show, Bullock/Clooney delivered respectable workmanlike performances, finally some 3D worth the ticket price. There were times when the score tried to push me around emotionally. I think it would have been more effective with longer stretches of silence.

12:30 p.m. show, Tupelo: ~20 people

This is a real tour de force of effects and craft but it left me with almost nothing to chew on afterwards, which even bad movies usually do.

It's a pure ride.

Best use of 3D ever though.

it left me with almost nothing to chew on afterwards, which even bad movies usually do

otm, just said the same thing to a friend

here's soemthing to chew on, DON'T GO TO SPACE IT'S SCARY AS FUCK HOLY SHIT

This is a real tour de force of effects and craft but it left me with almost nothing to chew on afterwards, which even bad movies usually do.

It's a pure ride.

― goth drama is universal (latebloomer), Saturday, October 5, 2013 6:29 PM (1 hour ago)

yeah, this is otm.

What it left me to chew on is that it's the first CGI-dominated action film I've seen in just about ever (probably since War of the Worlds) that was presented in a wholly aesthetically astonishing manner. That's a whole freaking lot, given how many of those dumb things I have to see every year.

so this movie is food for thought for people who have to see dumb cgi movies, is what you're saying

I'm going for the "pure ride" alone. If I come out with anything else, it's a bonus.

In the same sense that movies you need to see twice probably shouldn't be seen once, I'm not particularly driven to see a movie that more than critic says has to be seen in a format (IMAX) I've yet to bother paying for.

more than one critic

So skip it.

Movies don't sound like your thing.

oh don't be a baby

sorry i made fun of your "it's good because i have to see a lot of bullshit" critic gripe

In the same sense that movies you need to see twice probably shouldn't be seen once, I'm not particularly driven to see a movie that more than critic says has to be seen in a format (IMAX) I've yet to bother paying for.

― da croupier, Saturday, October 5, 2013 8:47 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9627011/photos/bored.gif

you know a movie's good when, instead of arguing a movie's merits, they get cranky when you express skepticism

i'm patiently waiting for the critic's embargo to lift

the only gravity you need

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cDdMZ2K9o0

I saw it in old-fashioned 2-D, got dizzy a few times, was glad it didn't last beyond 90 minutes.

I've never seen an IMAX or 3D movie, don't give a shit. I'm glad it had enough action to ignore Bullock and Clooney.

hopefully that'll lure croup.

this was awes, lol at the jaded skepticism in the 2012 era of this thread.

not really sure i get that "nothing to chew on afterwards" considering the whole thing is a meditation on hope, hopelessness, and death

lol, re 2012, can you possibly imagine that max is not gonna see this

i wasn't talking about max, no idea if he will see it

yeah i know, but distaste for S Bullock is to be expected (reg'lar people like her, and she hasn't made a good movie in 19 years)

well i don't like sandy much either but if "sandra bullock" comprises even 1% of your thoughts abt this one, you're being a dummy (that's a general "you")

Forget the actors, guys. But they're of course responsible for about ten minutes of ehh dialoue.

*dialgoue

fuckin phone

so the words are not the diaGLUE of this pitcher

It is kind of amazing how many bad movies Sandy B has been in

impt update from twitter - max saw gravity

is this one a huge ponderous piece of shit like cuarons other movies

I ask only because space

lol

can the least chill guy in the world really make a 'ride' movie im skeptical cause that implies fun

I can actually see this working out really well in 3D

― but actually it is impossible to have a penis on the body of a mermaid (dyao), Saturday, March 13, 2010 4:13 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2010 me otm

can the least chill guy in the world really make a 'ride' movie im skeptical cause that implies fun

Def not fun

max "evolved" on Gravity

"ride" might be applied by ppl who mistakenly didn't recognize Nolan's Dark Knights as ponderous pieces of shit, ya never know.

perhaps he 'came back down to earth'

batmans are kinda ponderous pieces of shit but also kind of fun which is weird

sad you didn't like children of men :/

haha wait sry guys I'm confused I was thinking of Iñárritu i am racist lol

that's cool I want to see this now

I love children of men!

Dude I hate space movies. This is fine.

lol lag on fire itt

lmao

batmans are kinda ponderous pieces of shit but also kind of fun which is weird

― lag∞n, Sunday, October 6, 2013 2:50 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo they are 3 ponderous pieces of shit that have a few cool special effects sequences and 30 minutes of Heath Ledger being amazing.

I really like bain

also the weird stylized cities

sandarooni

Yeah they're like gta games xp

I'm watching Prometheus right now I'm glad I didn't see this in theaters so I have the money to go watch gravity
Twice in theaters

haha wait sry guys I'm confused I was thinking of Iñárritu i am racist lol

― lag∞n, Saturday, October 5, 2013 10:53 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's cool I want to see this now

― lag∞n, Saturday, October 5, 2013 10:53 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love children of men!

― lag∞n, Saturday, October 5, 2013 10:53 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh good! inarritu is fuckin garbage!

yeah really glad we got that cleared up

prometheus is bad xp

yah but I understand now why the prometheus thread is one of the largest on ilx

did you get to the part where they find the identical DNA

I have high hopes for the next Ridley Scott movie because non-morons wrote it and it looks just as gorgeous as Prometheus

man this shit is playing in imax like 2 hours away from me, burlington doesnt even have an imax what is this pretend state

I'm surprised they're still letting Ridley Scott touch money after what I just saw

I think vt has 'actual IMAX' which is just like interacting w nature and shit

irl imax

oh that makes sense

the foliage is shit this year tho, i give it like one and a half stars

btw just browsing ridleys imdb and this is the description of one he made a few years ago w russell crowe

A British investment broker inherits his uncle's chateau and vineyard in Provence, where he spent much of his childhood. He discovers a new laid-back lifestyle as he tries to renovate the estate to be sold.

haha did anyone see that shit does it have a plot

i just looked at the imax map, lol @ "hooksett or montreal"

lol, re 2012, can you possibly imagine that max is not gonna see this

lmao

I loved this

ha i think manchester is the closest to me, 2 hours, smh

i have a friend who lives there tho maybe i can make a day of it

if I get sick from shaky cam type movies should I be wary of this?

film ends with Russell tossing his rolex into a stream, as he looks wistfully at the setting sun after having found out there's more to life than the trading floor

Ryan it's not 'shaky' but it's very spinny

ok I think I can handle spinny. I'll sit further back just in case.

This is a real tour de force of effects and craft but it left me with almost nothing to chew on afterwards, which even bad movies usually do.

It's a pure ride.

disagree with this! felt like there was a lot going on

in fact it's the opposite of shaky, each shot has been planned to w/I fractions of a millimeter... prob if u can handle the trailer u can handle the film

film ends with Russell tossing his rolex into a stream, as he looks wistfully at the setting sun after having found out there's more to life than the trading floor

― 乒乓, Saturday, October 5, 2013 11:20 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol otm

disagree with this! felt like there was a lot going on

― max, Sunday, October 6, 2013 3:23 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'll be happy to hear your take on it!

Max Skinner: Ludivine? Don't you think this is a bit much? I mean, she is my cousin.
Ludivine Duflot: Almost all French aristocrat have, how you say... liaison with their cousins, yes?

Max Skinner: [sticking his fist out of the sun roof] LANCE ARMSTRONG!
group of french cyclists: [grumbling and flicking him off] Fuck you!

Max Skinner: This place does not suit my life.
Fanny Chenal: No Max, it's your life that does not suit this place.

hah i just watched the trailer, it contained that last couplet

oh don't be a baby
― da croupier, Saturday, October 5, 2013 7:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry i made fun of your "it's good because i have to see a lot of bullshit" critic gripe
― da croupier, Saturday, October 5, 2013 7:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No really, be that person with this movie. By all means. Have fun with that.

You know my point wasn't that "I have to see so much crap that even halfway decent stuff seems like a masterpiece" but rather "I've seen so many people do it wrong that I recognize what an achievement it is when someone does it right."

I'll be interested in reading how people parse this, because I kind of agree that there's not much to chew on except HOLY GOD THIS IS FUCKING INSANE for more than half of the film's 91 minutes.

Also, I was a 3D virgin before this. I was just waiting for the right one to come along.

Eric I'll admit it was unfair to suggest a film is worthless just because a lot of critics warn to pay for as much extra spectacle as possible (even if it's a red flag for folks who're glad they skipped avatar), and I'm sorry it shot you to terror level "movies don't sound like your thing."

You don't sound sorry.

Anyway, you're a De Palma fan, for God's sake. Be a little more excited for a movie that puts gliding visual appeal in the drivers seat.

no boobs tho

Earth. She eez zee beegest boob of all.

the motherboob

i like that brian depalma talks like an italian chef in a bugs bunny cartoon

lol croup do you hate lawrence of arabia for 'if it doesn't hold up watching it on yr phone what's the point' reasons also?

To be fair, I def think Laurence of Arabia falls into the "nice dressing, where's the beef?" category some have cast Gravity into, but it's been awhile since I saw it.

228 minutes vs. 90 minutes

o it definitely falls in that category (if it doesn't it's cuz of o'toole, not lean)(also falls in the being able to momentarily suggest if not sustain that spectacle like this is the whole point of the medium) but it's weird seeing ppl on this thread that were down w/ 'art should be comfort food and nothing more' on the breaking bad thread now suddenly having a problem w/ a film cuz it's just spectacle/entertainment.

http://wallpaperswa.com/thumbnails/detail/20120424/outer%20space%20camels%201360x768%20wallpaper_wallpaperswa.com_73.jpg

that reminds me that the greatest laugh i got or am likely to get from anything this year is when i saw one of those geico 'mike mike mike mike mike GUESS WHAT DAY IT IS' ads on 9/11.

I've seen a couple of film guys on my wall grumble that the movie "is good for what it is" as if, I dunno, there's such thing as "what it is."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-gravity-soaring-friday-643469

receiving an A- CinemaScore

For a movie that has about as much plot as Andy Warhol's Empire, that's a surprisingly high score from the people who usually require their films to be about heroic, Christian firefighters who never swear to hand out an A+.

lol croup do you hate lawrence of arabia for 'if it doesn't hold up watching it on yr phone what's the point' reasons also?

Actually, I enjoyed arabia fine on TV (probably, as you said, largely for o'toole)

228 minutes vs. 90 minutes

Mad grateful for this post, which actually points out why someone shouldn't worry this is another avatar, in the middle of the cranky pant-shitting and defensive overstatement of my concern "it has to work on my phone"? dude, I just don't want to sit down and have someone say "that was 3d, not imax 3d, not nearly immersive enough."

ok I'll admit seeing "ugh do I really need to spend extra?" put a bug up asses was a little fun, not totally mad that happened

Clearly the message has been pervasive, tho. Tracking suggested more people planned on seeing this in 3-D than Avatar, even. Those B.O. numbers indicate about 80 percent chose 3-D.

So much of what I liked about the movie was 3-D-related. I can't imagine it would've had nearly the same impact in 2-D.

^ this

seeing this tomorrow morning in IMAX 3D. chose a seat further back than i normally would!

re: "meaning" and all that, i wonder if this film falls in that category of art in which what is left out is the meaningful aesthetic choice as opposed to what is there.

^ the bellwether for how you'll feel about gravity's "meaning" lies in how you felt about the ending of children of men, *SPOILER whether you felt the boat should have shown up or not.

is there a boat in this one too

It's a hit.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2013/10/06/gravity-runner-runner-box-office/2930591/

i mean, if you can get nerds AND sandra bullock fans to pay top dollar

between the heat, this and identity thief, Bullock and Melissa McCarthy have to be the top box office draws of 2013, right?

do you guys know anyone who saw The Heat?

Certainly they are among the most reliable. This is, what, the sixth Bullock vehicle to break her own B.O. opening weekend record?

Saw both The Heat and Identity Theft, and ugh.

IT was embarrassing.

but yeah Bullock is at the peak of her career. Julia Roberts' box office grosses started declining after HER Academy Award.

I haven't seen either, but Identity Thief making over $100m was one of those "well she definitely must be a star" signals as America has been happy to ignore Jason Bateman movies

Could easily see Bullock finding her way to a 2nd win on this one. Blanchett seems a really soft frontrunner to me, et al.

xp America is right on that count

is there a boat in this one too

― lag∞n, Sunday, October 6, 2013 1:02 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark

in a manner of speaking, yes

a space shuttle is kind of like a 'boat' when u think about it... a space boat. and its not the only 'boat' in this movie

There is also a boat...load of thrills, chills and excitement!!

Was a little underwhelmed w/ this, but probably because of too high expectations. Disagree with the nothing to chew on comment. Cuaron loaded this up with subtext. The shots of religious iconography, Bullock in fetus pose, etc. Was pretty heavy handed in that respect sometimes. Not gonna try to parse it here, but he was definitely shooting for something more than a "ride".

guys I kinda hate the 3D experience in general

has anyone itt seen it in 2D and liked it just as well as if it was 3D?

*maybe spoilers*

Also the lol Malicky things like here's a frog, let's follow that for a bit instead of the life or death action happening, but it felt way less natural than a Malick thing cuz it was very pointed and in your face. Read some talk about "the small touches" in the movie, but the dude ZOOMS in on those small touches and they lose their subtly and poignancy because of it.

circa1916 otm abt the subtext. between this and children of men cuaron has an interesting track record with using religious images and tropes.

i wonder how many sermons in the next year will use gravity. Feels like its designed for pastors.

yeah it's not a subtle movie

and rightfully so imo

so i don't want to see this movie if i'm not seeing it *right* but apparently there is like 1 theatre in narnia that has all the specifications required and none of them in the MD/DC region i'm just going to give up and buy this when it comes out on vhs

In retrospect, it was presumptuous for them to release this movie knowing full well there are still screens out there that aren't IMAX sized, and knowing that some theaters are still on old DTS systems.

I would wait until it comes out on iphone and psp xp

i don't even know what those are

i dont really agree that you *need* to see this in 3d, i mean i havent seen it in 2d but the 3d wasnt so unbelievably important that i think id have had a worse time

the bigger the screen the better for sure tho

xp They're a bit like the Zoopraxiscope, but newer.

Like I said upthread I saw it in 2D and felt no pangs for a more ambitious experience.

Also the lol Malicky things like here's a frog, let's follow that for a bit instead of the life or death action happening, but it felt way less natural than a Malick thing cuz it was very pointed and in your face. Read some talk about "the small touches" in the movie, but the dude ZOOMS in on those small touches and they lose their subtly and poignancy because of it.

― circa1916, Sunday, October 6, 2013 11:11 AM (1 hour ago)

re the idea that there's no substance to the film:

i'm tempted to read gravity as a plea for the value and fragility of our earthly habitat. inevitably for a film of this type, it places a great deal of emphasis on the simple beauty of our planet as seen from space, the "blue marble", at a distance where national boundaries become insignificant. at the same time, its narrative depends entirely on our awareness of the utter inhospitability of space. the characters exist in tiny little bubbles of manufactured atmosphere, never more than inches from the frozen void. it's such a bubble that cradles bullock womblike on the escape pod, and in that moment she's both a fetus and terrestrial life in general, sustained by a tiny slip of breathable air.

the unbounded surface of the earth is echoed by the various spacecraft and stations, ostensibly belonging to this nation or that, but essentially the same, unified by human need more than divided by tribe. marvin the martian floats around the american shuttle just as his green-skinned equivalent floats around the russian station. same cylindrical chambers, tools & utensils, buttons and instruction manuals. more than anything else, same air, same atmosphere.

i think that's the point of the malick-style business with the frog. i felt a very strong sense, as bullock's ryan dug her toes into the sand, of the beauty and almost absurd fragility of life on earth. it's not a tacked-on "message", but a natural product of the plot. the action moves from one life-annihilating environment to another, from frigid vacuum to blazing free-fall to drowning depths. of course we feel a sense of relief to be back on solid ground, filling our lungs with warm & uncanned air. the film's final moments are ebullient, but i also felt in them a subtle note of warning, the reminder that however safe we feel on our home planet, earthly life is much like an astronaut, able to live only as long as a delicate atmospheric balance is maintained.

the friend i was discussing gravity with last night called this interpretation a stretch, which i suppose it is, and that's why i was so quick to agree that the film is little more than a ride. still, i have the sense that at least some of it was intentional. it's nothing too terribly deep, but perhaps substance of a sort.

My favorite bit: spotting in the backdrop of Earth a dangerously compact hurricane churning in the Atlantic while Sandra Bullock chokes on the two percent of oxygen remaining in her suit

yes that was cool, took me a minute to figure out what it was

the unbounded surface of the earth is echoed by the various spacecraft and stations, ostensibly belonging to this nation or that, but essentially the same, unified by human need more than divided by tribe.

Yes. This is the closest I felt it came to a message (outside of the cheesier dead daughter stuff I ignored), and I thought it was nicely done, not bombastic at all. Though I find that my thoughts afterward are completely absorbed by the spectacle of space, the microscopic humans in the terrifying void. You might even call that something to chew on.

so it's sort of a buckminster fuller "spaceship earth" kinda thing? i can get with that.

I find that my thoughts afterward are completely absorbed by the spectacle of space, the microscopic humans in the terrifying void. You might even call that something to chew on.

I've been unable to stop thinking about the images, the inspirations of space travel being presented in a completely non-science fiction context all weekend long. My first impressions of this being 'just' a ride are fading a bit as well.

Comment upthread about sitting up close was no joke. Most films are filled with jump-cuts and fast pans that are intolerable when they fill your peripheral vision, but this is mostly slow, single-shot drifting -- and even when it's jumpy and fast, they're plausible pov shots that don't send your nervous system into overloaded shutdown. Very different style than what we've grown used to.

^ yeah I have a lot I wanna say about cuarons use of long cuts. were lifting the embargo tomorrow, yeah?

really think lifting the embargo before ppl have had a chance to see this thing properly on their phones is a bad idea

official lifting of embargoes is after i see it, so yes tomorrow is fine.

shit, hadn't caught the embargo-ing. sorry for spoilers. please don't read my post you already read.

seeing this again tonight in a theater w/ Dolby Atmos™

pumped for the Regal Premium Experience®

best film about newton's second and third laws ever.

^^post very much much in character. <3

This was a pretty intense movie - still trying to wrap my thoughts around it.

o it definitely falls in that category (if it doesn't it's cuz of o'toole, not lean)(also falls in the being able to momentarily suggest if not sustain that spectacle like this is the whole point of the medium) but it's weird seeing ppl on this thread that were down w/ 'art should be comfort food and nothing more' on the breaking bad thread now suddenly having a problem w/ a film cuz it's just spectacle/entertainment.

― balls, Sunday, October 6, 2013 10:24 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Everbody Is Dumb As Hell And Doesnt Even Know What They REally Want

Eric I'll admit it was unfair to suggest a film is worthless just because a lot of critics warn to pay for as much extra spectacle as possible (even if it's a red flag for folks who're glad they skipped avatar), and I'm sorry it shot you to terror level "movies don't sound like your thing."

― da croupier, Sunday, October 6, 2013 3:21 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol... what life events made u such a gross person?

just about every criticism of this i read make me think of the person in the Breaking Bad thread who said "it's about seeming smarter than someone who's made something brilliant"... people goin "Meh, Wheres The Depth" (estelle getty voice) or "oh the dialogue... so jejune"... im not saying you gotta kiss the movie's ass or even like it but they feel like such insufficient responses to something like this

GREAT GODDAMN CTHULHU EVERYONE

well it's like Apollo 13: The Ride

Complete with Ed Harris as the voice of Mission Control!

Saw this in 3D at the Cinedome. I would say go with the 3D - zero gravity looks amazing, but def. go for a theater with the Dolby ATMOS - there's scenes where just the sounds are COMPLETELY FUCKING TERRIFYING.

As a science-fiction film, it's about as dumb as an episode of Space: 1999, but as a modern action thrill ride, it's as full-on as seeing Die Hard for the first time.

Veg the 3D in this is incredible and really enhances the experience, give it a go. There was a trailer for a Hobbit before it that looked terrible and out of phase and herky-jerky, and I was trepidatious, but then in the film I wanted to swim up into the Cinerama screen and soak in it

btw just learned from this terrible thread about a great movie that lag∞n lives in Burlington: I'll be there for about five hours this afternoon, want to grab a late lunch g∞n?

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BV-npN0IYAA0Gma.png

just about every criticism of this i read make me think of the person in the Breaking Bad thread who said "it's about seeming smarter than someone who's made something brilliant"... im not saying you gotta kiss the movie's ass or even like it but they feel like such insufficient responses to something like this

― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Monday, October 7, 2013 1:11 AM (5 hours ago)

if every criticism you read comes across that way, then maybe you are demanding some degree of ass-kissing. the anti-criticism itt reminds me of the pacific rim discussion, where many suggested that to voice any response other than "HOLY SHIT GIANT ROBOT MONSTER FITE!!!" was to miss the point. i suppose i'm jaded, but the adrenalin high of a stupendous thrill ride quickly fades once i leave the theater. i remember being transfixed, but not the feeling of being transfixed. here, i remember whirling exploding stuff, some jaw-dropping space & zero-g imagery, bullock's loveliness and several desperate flights from this to that, but i recall it all in a rather detached way, absent the emotional response that comes so easily during the viewing experience. so i think it's pretty natural to point out that while the film did provide one hell of a rush, the buzz wore off rather quickly.

i hope that doesn't come across as an arrogant dismissal of cuaron or the film. i genuinely enjoyed gravity. but different strokes, you know?

yeah but you say every movie lacks emotion... thats your thing man

i liked your earthly habitat post

after seeing this again in Regal Premium Experience®, idg people who think that bullock and clooney were 'workmenlike' or were only perfunctory... that was some good acting

yeah but you say every movie lacks emotion... thats your thing man

lol, is that true? i have to think about this.

i mean i saw amour twice in the theater, and it ripped me up both times. cried like a baby at the end of breaking the waves. tend to get a little misty watching pixar flicks, even got sucked into friggin' avatar. but i dunno, maybe i do haul that gripe out a bit too often...

i mean ive just noticed you said it about pacific rim and some spielberg movies. im kinda just razzin u about it tho

the anti-criticism itt reminds me of the pacific rim discussion, where many suggested that to voice any response other than "HOLY SHIT GIANT ROBOT MONSTER FITE!!!" was to miss the point.

i know what you mean and b/c of that i tried not to make it sound like Gravity exists on some plane where critical thought cant be applied to it.* but the thing is, its perfectly defensible as a 'regular movie' or whatever. it's funny, well-acted, has emotional weight - i was chokin up a few times when sandy was listenin to the chinese peasant on the ham radio with his damn fool ass dogs, or talkin about her kid - and even makes space for weirdo on the nose moments like the fetus scene (which i loved tbh)

*though one guy i know, the only thing he had to say about it afterwards is that the dialogue was bad - and to me, that's like if someone takes you to your city's tastiest chinese restaurant and afterwards you just complain about how the vinyl booths are ratty and the radio playing cantonese pop music was too loud. i mean you can talk in a critical way about something while actually concentrating on the thing that it is, y'know?

i don't think they were chinese peasants! i, uh, def choked up a bit during my first /and/ second viewings

also in the fetus scene there are a bunch of hoses floating around looking like an umbilical cord. nice touch cuaron!

i was just guessing, i have no idea what that damn chucklin fool was speakin.

the music during the first debris attack is really cool

i mean i saw amour twice in the theater, and it ripped me up both times

You have a weird compass for emotional engagement with movies.

h4a otm

theres like an unfortunate tendency for ppl on this board and online and everywhere to, idk, make sure that everything is *properly weighted and ranked*, like, god forbid anyone gets *too* enthusiastic about a movie, gotta make sure we mention that the dialogue is bad or that the music swelled too much at the end, wouldnt want to overrate this

its the misguided urge to post something *more interesting* than "wow that was great i really enjoyed it"

do agree that bullock's performance was impressive & engaging. it's cheap to write her off by saying that terror and sorrow are the easiest emotions to phone in. not many actors could so effectively carry 75% of a film on their own, even one where suspense and spectacle are arguably given the starring role. and yeah, clooney was good, too, but less surprising in that i've come to expect that kind of offhand grace & charm from him.

i was v. amused that clooney's character was SO clooney-ish

like did they even write lines for him

people are anxious about their middlebrow pleasures, it's true.

eh, we enjoy things in different ways, to different degrees. no need to be snide about it.

i dunno, maybe we're supposed to confine our musings to twitter these day.

s

but the thing is, its perfectly defensible as a 'regular movie' or whatever. it's funny, well-acted, has emotional weight - i was chokin up a few times when sandy was listenin to the chinese peasant on the ham radio with his damn fool ass dogs, or talkin about her kid - and even makes space for weirdo on the nose moments like the fetus scene (which i loved tbh)

agree with this. Also amused by the discussion about "meaning" when apparently Cuaron himself didn't actually give much thought to it, and really did set out to make a thrill-ride movie:

The original title for "Gravity" was "Space Adventure in 3D." That title makes complete sense now.
That was the original title. And that was bold to say -- and maybe with 3D big, big, big on the poster. There's a part of this film that we wanted to do a bold movie experience ... a movie movie. And, yes, there's all the subtext that the movie has. But, we kept on saying, we didn't have one single reference -- when we were writing or developing or talking dramatically about this film -- about space films. But we did reference "Duel" by (Steven) Spielberg and "A Man Escaped" by (Robert) Bresson.

"A Man Escaped" is pretty much my kinda thrill ride

i was v. amused that clooney's character was SO clooney-ish

lol Robert Downey Jr was originally supposed to play the Clooney role and lbr he would probably have given the exact same performance.

I've only seen IMAX in science museums, wasn't it always projected in the squarish ratio? Or has than changed, so a wide standard film doesn't have to be cropped?

i dont think cuaron is saying that he didnt give much thought to the movies meaning!

yeah but i think the movie industry latched onto it and most cinema theatre IMAC screens are wide format...

btw see this in IMAX 3D if you can - real3D is good but the screen is not as bright as the IMAX, and this is a pretty dark film.

anyway, so, i remember fondly a quote - can't remember who said it, i wanna say one of the russians, or maybe henry james - that how a writer handles the passage of time is one of the most important criteria you can judge her by. i think that's very true, and i think you can extend that to film as well - all forms of narrative story telling.

there's a tendency to handwave away the long take as a feat of technical backpatting and nothing more - it's a way for directors to show off their proficiency; they're received by critics as a parlor trick first, and as a narrative device second... i think if you view cuaron in that light, you're doing a huge disservice to his craft. everybody remembers the car scene from children of men, but notice how much the tension of that scene depends on the scene being uncut - how a playful sunday drive whips into a frenzied escape for survival - not to say that a cut here wouldn't preserve the tension and the fright; just that the long uncut take here puts it a peg above how a director would normally handle a scene like this.

if it helps you be at ease here, iirc the wiki says that all the space walks here were done w/ CGI, and clooney/bullock's faces were inserted digitally here - so that takes the pressure off of, you know, asking how many takes did it take to get it right. instead, you gotta focus on why cuaron's in love with the long cut - and for me, the answer is that the long cut is the closest a movie gets to existing in versimilar real time. there are other works that use the device of existing in real-time as an artifice, like 24, but you can still cut those works in traditional ways. but here, the first scene is almost a repeat of the car scene in children of men - how calmly it starts out, premonitions that something might be wrong, the way everything goes to shit, the camera unrelenting in its recording - there's no space for the viewer to hide - the first cut happens only after bullock is sent tumbling end over end into space.

i don't think the viewer becomes aware of the first chronological time-cut until bullock's in the soyuz and has to go out and detach the parachute - we don't see her put on the suit. quite remarkable, considering that happens at about the midway point of the movie. but also remember that bullock and clooney set their mission timer clocks to an hour and thirty minutes, cause that's how long it'll take for the debris to orbit again. somehow, an hour and a half has passed by the time she exits to unhook the parachute... only then do you realize that a large part of the journey to the ISS has been cut. she resets her timer again once she's in the soyuz and free from the ISS. i don't think it counts down again before she touches down on earth. the whole story takes place in 3 hours, m/l, and we're shown an hour and a half. i really can't think of any movie off-hand where so little time has been compressed into the frame of the movie.

also it's p cliched at this point to say that a film was 'like a video game' but some of the first-person shots of bullock inside the ISS were literally like a video game, like a QTE.

But we did reference "Duel" by (Steven) Spielberg and "A Man Escaped" by (Robert) Bresson.

― Roz, Monday, October 7, 2013 10:39 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i thought of SS a bunch during this, some parts are so spielbergy - stuff like sandy tapping the fuel gauge and it suddenly drops to 0 and the camera pans over to her horrified face

theres like an unfortunate tendency for ppl on this board and online and everywhere to, idk, make sure that everything is *properly weighted and ranked*, like, god forbid anyone gets *too* enthusiastic about a movie, gotta make sure we mention that the dialogue is bad or that the music swelled too much at the end, wouldnt want to overrate this

Just about everyone on this thread has been overwhelmingly positive though. The rest is critics bein' critics.

great post, dayo. cuaron isn't the only filmmaker to work in something like real time (rope comes to mind, my dinner with andre, but also action films like source code from a couple years back), but it is unusual.

http://www.xwordblog.com/WindowsLiveWriter/GaryCooperHighNoon.jpg

The only time I scratched my head was when Clooney reminded Bullock that the Chinese station was 100 miles away and I'm thinking there's 12 minutes left in the movie and how is this possible until I remembered there're in space and have fire extinguishers.

i dont think cuaron is saying that he didnt give much thought to the movies meaning!

To me, it reads like Cuaron set out to make a thrilling movie experience first and foremost, and on that front, you know, succeeded spectacularly. That's not to say the movie lacks meaning or substance, but anyone looking for something more than "oh god, I don't want this lovely sad woman to die" or even what contenderizer said upthread about the space and Earth, is looking for a different kind of movie imo.

The ending was pretty interesting to me - Sandy crawls out of the water but it didn't look like she was anywhere near human civilisation. She's obviously relieved to be back on Earth but at the same time, didn't seem like she was any closer to safety.

lol, gravity 2, chased by cows

well on the way down she hears on the radio that they're sending a rescue mission for her xp

really? I think I missed that bit in my sheer terror lol

yeah... doesn't seem unlikely that the escape pod would be set to broadcast an SOS signal once the escape sequence has been activated

the credits actually reveal her location, v v cute that they do; would have been horrible if it was stated in the film

yeah i heard the harris line about the rescue mission but some people i saw it with missed it

The location they filmed at is not necessarily the location Cuaron is saying the capsule landed at. But yeah, "rescue mission is on the way" takes care of that bit of tension. She can chill on the beach for a few minutes or an hour.

I don't know if she had the ability to answer or just didn't want to. I kind of want to believe that she just decided to live out the rest of her years in the (South Asian?) wilderness.

any guesses where she landed? Central Park?

We should probably go ahead and add *SPOILERS* to the title.

The ending was pretty interesting to me - Sandy crawls out of the water but it didn't look like she was anywhere near human civilisation. She's obviously relieved to be back on Earth but at the same time, didn't seem like she was any closer to safety.

― Roz, Monday, October 7, 2013 11:14 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i thought it was amazing how weird the earth looked after spending 90 mins in space

also re: the long take, i was super proud of myself for finding the parts in that first take where both actors disappear from the screen, e.g. when the camera pans across the earth, as spots where you can see where the take was stitched together. but then i found out it was all CGI

Also the lol Malicky things like here's a frog, let's follow that for a bit instead of the life or death action happening, but it felt way less natural than a Malick thing cuz it was very pointed and in your face. Read some talk about "the small touches" in the movie, but the dude ZOOMS in on those small touches and they lose their subtly and poignancy because of it.

― circa1916, Sunday, October 6, 2013 2:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

i haven't seen much malick but from a technical perspective it could be a way to preserve the take, notice how bullock disappears offscreen and then onscreen again. i assume a stunt double was used to get out of the pod. also when she's in the soyuz or the chinese escape pod, i can't remember, the helmet keeps on drifting in front of the camera and obscuring bullock, presumably as a way to stitch takes together w/o cutting.

this was pretty cool.

spielbergian in all the right ways but more than anything it reminded me of the middle section of Castaway. and like that movie (and to add to some of what's been said upthread) it struck me as more than anything about how being alive isn't so much a matter of passive equilibrium (equilibrium is space, after all, where "nothing can live") but a constant struggle, a "choice," for survival.

I wish I had sat closer!

ease of frog swimming nicely underlined notions of "habitat" I think. obviously. but didn't feel heavy handed but like, "wow look at that sucker swim."

There was a preview for the new Robert Redford movie where he's sailing around in the ocean, has an accident, and is stranded in his lifeboat, and it seemed very thematically appropriate.

I don't keep up with opening numbers really, but $55m seems reasonably good for an October release in a depressed market.

it's the best october release ever, at least ignoring inflation and how much was spent on additional toppings

also enjoyed the shot of the Buddha because I took it as a sort of compassionate mockery of her frantic attempts to make peace with whatever was about to happen to her.

the shot of the buddha mirrors the shot of the catholic idol in the soyuz escape pod

I missed that shot! what idol was it exactly?

not idol! i mean, icon

pretty standard icon of jesus iirc

at least, i assumed that's what it was. it was a little painting of jesus. i'm not sure if it was actually a russian icon or not.

what an interesting contrast. maybe Jesus is for like the resurrection of her will to live in the soyuz or whatever. death and rebirth yada yada.

simplistically one could read the film as a broad elaboration on the 'there are no atheists in foxholes' chestnut

see also: bullock's little epistle to george as she's overriding the altitude reading to activate the landing jets, telling him to say hello to her daughter on the other side

on the second viewing, the 'themes' stood out more - the exhortation to just live. you might almost say the film is an answer to l'étranger.

i mean, maybe one reason that people upthread found there wasn't much to chew on is because that message - to just live, to try - is overshadowed when the capstone of that effort involves shooting yourself out of an escape pod, using a fire extinguisher to match orbital speed w/ a rapidly descending space station, entering it, and blindly pushing at buttons labeled in chinese that somehow activate the reentry protocol as the station is burning up in the atmosphere. you could say it was a literally a miracle, in the religious sense. but that maybe contradicts the message of self-directed determinism that starts the sequence w/ a careful override of the altitude reading so as to start the soft landing jets.

it was an orthodox icon ftr

goddamn it K-Lo hasn't tweeted about this movie yet

Anyways this movie was awesome and yeah I have reservations about it but also I am an asshole who can't fully enjoy anything without nitpicking but even with those reservations I thought it was awesome. Definitely scarier than pretty much every horror movie I've watched in recent years.

Though the backlash against the complaints reminds me of when I saw Titanic with my dad and then he got mad at me for criticizing it.

The first movie in years – maybe ever – that made it impossible to eat while watching.

I dunno about that. I gobbled down most of my popcorn.

OK, it was guilt: I packed a sandwich and brought it into the theater in my bag. I bought water though!

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gravity-review-by-astronaut-buzz-639883

didn't read bcz spoilers, but here ya go

http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/alfonso-cuaron-answers-your-gravity-questions.html

The icon was of St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers.

oops! bearded white dudes in robes all look the same to me, i guess.

...maybe one reason that people upthread found there wasn't much to chew on is because that message - to just live, to try - is overshadowed when the capstone of that effort involves shooting yourself out of an escape pod...

i didn't go into the "will to live" theme because it isn't very interesting. standard-issue exhortation to uplift, imo. not much chew toy value.

^exactly. I won't lie though, I WAS wowed by the film-making, ad a lot of the imagery has stayed with me longer than I thought it would.

The location they filmed at is not necessarily the location Cuaron is saying the capsule landed at.

It's so specific that I can't believe he WOULDN'T want it to mean that though! Why even bother filming there otherwise?

Again, v glad they don't actually say it in the film though

Just say where it was.

what an interesting contrast. maybe Jesus is for like the resurrection of her will to live in the soyuz or whatever. death and rebirth yada yada.

― ryan, Monday, October 7, 2013 1:57 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

cuaron kinda hammers this point home in the interview that morbs linked to

also smacking my head, duh, rebirth in water, baptism, etc.

man when that capsule started to fill with water i definitely gasped for air one time

(we have spoilers itt now rite)

I hold my breath every time ppl in movies have to, out of curiosity. Both the ones in this were legit

NA - I'm on zing in airports, can't imdb that far!

The score was one of my problems but it was pretty effective how it cut out when the camera went underwater.

http://jerrygarrett.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/gravity-filmed-in-lake-powell-arizona-not-exactly/ <---?

i'm hoping/betting that the bluray will include a version that only includes diegetic sound

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/07/gravity_is_campy_cuaron_space_movie_is_future_camp_classic_for_sandra_bullock.html

In other words, "I love hating to love it."

OK so I don't get why that's meaningful?
xpost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Powell#Popular_Culture

Ah, a sly reference to Maverick, well done, Cuaron.

haha

that's a cute nod imo

okay lol I remembered her home town wrong when the credit flashed up

obv it's really a Dr Who reference, she is the TRUE Impossible Astronaut

Ryan Stone/River Song, DO U C?!

the whole story takes place in 3 hours, m/l, and we're shown an hour and a half. i really can't think of any movie off-hand where so little time has been compressed into the frame of the movie.

i discussed this with a friend, who was saying why didn't they just make the things debris around every 45 minutes, then they could have done the whole thing in real time. i don't know how much realism they wanted for the dreadful pedantic degrasse tyson types (seriously fuck that guy), but this is one thing where, if you want to be realistic, the debris really does have to come around every ~90ish minutes, because that's a property of the orbital altitude of the hubble t'scope.

booming post btw dan.

i was v. amused that clooney's character was SO clooney-ish

― call all destroyer, Monday, October 7, 2013 10:31 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. if i had one criticism (sorry max), it would be "when did the actor george clooney become to be an astronaut?". like he was so george clooney that it kind of broke the 4th wall. not that i've actually met the cloonster. i've often thought it'd like to though.

i think it was slutsky who said about the first episode of sherlock, that he punched the air when he saw the first text message come in, it was so satisfying.

i basically did this with the fire extinguisher. i was lolling when she said "damn it" and remembered to take the first extinguisher, and then when she managed to grab on the last bit of the ISS by throwing away the fire extinguisher. i said "yes!" out loud like an idiot.

amc kips bay is fake imax though so i'm going again at lincoln sq

the ONE nd tyson thing that bugged me was how, before clooney unclips, theres a couple wide angle shots that seem to show that theyve pretty clearly *stopped* moving--its not like hes continuing to pull her anywhere, she could just pull him in

nope, they are spinning. there's centrifugal force. that's why the rope is pulled tight. the rope would be slack otherwise.

hah thanks caek

in the cuaron interview, he mentions that clooney basically wrote his parts for the hallucination bit in the soyuz... cloonster gonna cloon

My quibbles all concern expository dialogue ("Hurry! We've been up here a week, you know!"), but I guess it's inevitable in a movie where it all but disappears and couldn't be sprinkled more subtly.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/99/Rotatingwheelspacestation-mockup-nasa.jpg/734px-Rotatingwheelspacestation-mockup-nasa.jpg

i like clooney a lot but basically i only know him from ocean's 13... i think he did a good job of playing what i imagine a nasa space jockey cowboy would be like irl. or maybe nasa is where they send you when you don't have enough charisma to cut it at the air force, so the movie's unrealistic in that way.

are you SURE theyre spinning???

i loved that given just how packed this is with physics there was so little expository dialogue. like they show people some cool newton's third law stuff early on, trust that they will get it when it matters (i.e. the fire extinguisher).

they must be spinning if the rope is tight. the only other possibility is that this is not a flawless masterpiece, which i'm not ready to accept.

the fire extinguisher was every Transformer episode set in space given flesh

the camera is spinning with them i think. kinda like the blue danube docking scene in 2001. there are shots where you can tell the station is spinning, then they show the pilots eye view and it's stationary. cuaron just doesn't show the wide shot with the thing spinning, only the shot in the frame of reference of clooney/bullock/the station. would be totally miraculous if a powered down ISS that had suffered collisions was not spinning.

this is the only dgt tweet i like

https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/386984236541960193

one criticism that's v fact-checky, but i think is something more than "i want to make you feel bad for liking this film" and is actually kind of related to how people engage with movies, is that bullock's character is just not the kind of person they look for in an astronaut. the character doesn't ring true, and i wonder if this is true for "the general audience" as well as pedants like me. i just think "what is this woman doing in space, couldn't they get someone with their head screwed on a bit better?" i believe she exists, i just don't think she'd be an astronaut.

re: exposition, i noticed that they spelled out the acronym ISS on its first usage, then made sure to use the acronym in the next sentence

Clooney dialogue was so Clooning in the opening 20mins that I assumed it had been written for him and they crossed their fingers rly hard. but then you read that RDJr was up for it and its like "oh yeah, sure"

The breezy cloonular charm totally makes sense when shit goes down though, of course a super-useful skill for a team leader in that sitch could be to remain so calm and on-message that everyone gets swept into their orbit

accidental metaphor choice, pls degrasse tyson don't hurt 'em

yeah i agree with that, i think in one intvw cuaron says that one of the earliest criticism of the script from nasa types was that bullocks character just isnt someone whod ever have become an astronaut

"that" being caeks thing abt the scientist.

i didnt have a problem with clooney clooning either way

i haven't read any reviews of the film yet but how many of them use 'atmospheric' to describe it

everyone i know who has met astronauts says they're all really weird and creepily placid people.

damn I thought they were like Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment.

ryan stone def doesn't seem like the type of person who would drive cross country while wearing a diaper

ha right.

ndgt's criticism that a medical doctor would not be repairing the HST is utter bullshit.

http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/team_hubble/servicing_missions.php

everyone i know who has met astronauts says they're all really weird and creepily placid people.

― caek, Monday, October 7, 2013 10:15 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK-30442RII

Diaper-wearing astronaut jailed in love triangle plot

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2007/0206/20070206_063513_(FILES)__300.jpg

Astronaut Lisa Nowak (left) of the US space shuttle Discovery during a press conference after Discovery's landing at Kennedy Space Center last summer. Nowak (right) shown Tuesday in an Orange County, FL, jail booking photo after she was charged with attempted kidnapping, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, destruction of evidence and battery (NASA/Orange County, FL, police.)

lol remember when this guy ran for president

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/images/glenn/glennposed_undr.jpg

yeah i agree with that, i think in one intvw cuaron says that one of the earliest criticism of the script from nasa types was that bullocks character just isnt someone whod ever have become an astronaut

― max, Monday, October 7, 2013 5:12 PM (41 minutes ago)

Kind of in a similar vein to this, one dialogue problem I had early on was Kowalski asking Stone about herself while they were heading to the wrecked shuttle. It seemed unlikely that he wouldn't know at the very least the thumbnail bios of all the mission crew. But after giving it some thought, I figured he was just chatting with her and asking her questions he already knew the answers to, to calm her down and help her get her breathing under control.

The few Golden Age astronauts/cosmonauts I've met have had that preternatural calm intensity behind the jokey Space Cowboy stereotype, but it's the ability to instantly perceive and act on multiple streams of information at once and fish out what you need. The current astro/cosmo/taikonaut corps seem like they're just like everyone else involved in Big Science - extremely dedicated and focused on a project that takes months and years to see through.

xpost

I thought the same thing too. No different than a "who are you? who's the president?" question

xp yeah i think they're drawn from a different sample these days, true (hence the adult diapers).

yeah the point is really driven home when he asks her about his 'beautiful blue eyes'

xp!

i suppose the military people who have that dead eyed clarity are now going into seal team 6, not the (lol) US space program.

From the storyboards they created a digitally animated version of the film, complete with digital versions of the characters. “It looks like a crude Pixar film,” Lubezki says, “and it was so beautiful that when I showed it to my daughter probably after a year of work, she thought that was the movie. Many times, I would say, ‘Alfonso, why don’t we just use it like this, why do we have to go into production?’ ”

http://www.vulture.com/2013/09/director-alfonso-cuaron-on-making-gravity.html

It's really going to bug me that I'll never know how that story with the hairy guy turned out.

Aside, I love the SCE to AUX story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWQIryll8y8

It's really going to bug me that I'll never know how that story with the hairy guy turned out.

thought the implication was that his girl was with (shock) a cartoon 70s butch lesbian

"it wasn't a guy, it was..."

o i c

it's this story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQNzLBTCEDI

i don't think they should have been allowed to name kowalski, kowalski. kept on thinking of this the entire movie:

http://i.imgur.com/UrQX0Uh.jpg

not this one?

http://www.cupidproductions.co.uk/images/cVanishingPoint.jpg

From the storyboards they created a digitally animated version of the film, complete with digital versions of the characters. “It looks like a crude Pixar film,” Lubezki says, “and it was so beautiful that when I showed it to my daughter probably after a year of work, she thought that was the movie. Many times, I would say, ‘Alfonso, why don’t we just use it like this, why do we have to go into production?’ ”

Would be cool if they put this on the dvd/blu.

i've seen that too but it didn't stick w/ me like blade runner and DAOES did. i'm gonna break your pencil neck!!! xp

"...short, hairy guy. Turns out, it wasn't a guy, it was a chimpanzee."

Maybe? That's where my mind went, anyway.

THAT would be a good story.

I assumed it was a chimp dressed up too.

It's been a while since I saw a big movie like this on opening weekend, but I have to ask: Why was discussion of plot points informally embargoed until today? Why did someone say we should add "SPOILERS" to the thread title? I always assume that once a movie opens anywhere (apart from festival screenings, maybe), talking about it in detail is absolutely kosher. If I don't want spoilers, I don't read the thread. ::shrug::

Why was discussion of plot points informally embargoed until today?

it wasnt, people were talkin about them yesterday

The score was one of my problems but it was pretty effective how it cut out when the camera went underwater.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Monday, October 7, 2013 4:12 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i thought the placement of music was pretty well done overall - it helps audiences who are used to noisy space scenes by using music as sound effects. there was a cool interplay there in i think the ISS sequence where she was climbing around the outside and the debris was hitting and the music was going, and whenever she touched the craft you'd hear the sound through her suit. it seemed designed to play off each other there.

i was kinda grateful not to have too many total silences b/c ime quietness make multiplex audiences really antsy. also i thought that one sound that would start up every time the debris started approaching was cool... reminded me of the Fallout 1 soundtrack. i liked that it sounded intense w/o sounding too much like standard action music

i loved that given just how packed this is with physics there was so little expository dialogue. like they show people some cool newton's third law stuff early on, trust that they will get it when it matters (i.e. the fire extinguisher).

― caek, Monday, October 7, 2013 5:58 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i dug that a lot. momentum's such an intuitive idea, the opening scene really establishes what the movie's about in that respect

there was a cool interplay there in i think the ISS sequence where she was climbing around the outside and the debris was hitting and the music was going, and whenever she touched the craft you'd hear the sound through her suit. it seemed designed to play off each other there.

this scene was fucking intense, all this massive destruction going on w/ none of the sound efx that audiences have come to expect from these kinds of scenes

yeah after that moment at the start where you see the dude with a hole in his face the stakes are pretty immediately at the level of ass-clenching terror every time

It's not like I've ever resisted unequivocal rejections of irony on the largest of all possible canvasses (not just Children of Men -- which along with Inland Empire very literally restored my enthusiasm for movies in late '06 after a long string of disappointments both new and repertory -- but also the king of this particular strain, Titanic), but maybe even more so lately as my faith in film as a medium drifts ever more cynicism. I just started yoga last month, so ... maybe my tastes are inevitably drifting toward IMDB land.

*double-checks scores on Rush and Spring Breakers*

Nope.

There's definitely a think piece to be written about the nature of "earnest blockbusters" and the notion that they successfully smuggle in the sort of unsophisticated emotional pleas most of us see right through in the standard middlebrow entertainments that don't necessarily seek to dazzle with craftmanship (to go back to '06, Little Miss Sunshine and Babel).

At the end of the day, I think we process films intending to deliver a guttural emotional response very similarly to matters of taste in musical genre. In other words, if I find myself scanning for whether my feelings are authentic, that answers the question: they aren't authentic, and like Geraldine Hunt said you can't fake the feeling. I know this kind of subjectivity seems a very self-defeating stance for someone who (reluctantly, and with I feel diminishing returns) still writes reviews every now and again, but it also doesn't seem an appropriate response to a movie that seems to count, among its virtues, simplicity. (Actually, now that I think of it, Gravity's strategy of contrasting severely limited human drama against a backdrop of exaggeratedly massive scope reminds me a lot of The Tree of Life, another movie that split perceptive critics every which way.)

Actually not an out-and-out pan from you know who: http://www.nyfcc.com/2013/10/space-junk-of-the-week-gravity-reviewed-by-armond-white/

...from you know who

I don't understand. He seems to be saying that the image of earth from space is stolen from Kubrick??

He holds on to the cynical part of Kubrick’s vision–the easy part–without the corresponding astonishment.

lmao this man hates movies

i'm a huge brian de palma fan, and i can't believe anyone actually prefers mission to mars to... well, to fucking anything

just saw this last night - in 3D!

my viewing tips: as big a screen as possible. get there early, find the seat where the screen fills your entire field of view. during previews you'll think you're too close but you won't be for the movie.

― 乒乓
*spoilers, but if you haven't seen the movie and you're reading this far into the thread then you should rethink your general internet approach*

i didn't read this thread until just now, but luckily i instinctively followed 乒乓's advice. in fact, the theater was divided into an upper and lower section, and i was the only person who sat in the lower section, at a distance that filled up my field of view - no more, no less. i

re: "the message"

*bong rip*

i guess this is way too obvious, but i figured that Cuaron was just trying to make a simple connection between the weightlessness of space and Ryan's lack of emotional gravity. she's lost her daughter to a pointless accident, there's no one to grieve for her when she's dead, she's floating through her life, going to work and driving aimlessly, sleeping. Matt guides her along the way for the first part of the movie, and even after he's listening to great country music while floating off in the sunset while freezing and/or choking to death, his advice is still guiding her (get into this ship, head toward that ship, use the escape pod to make it home). Ryan struggles mightily, physically, to get from A to B, but she's still drifting emotionally. at her nadir - after Matt's advice has run its course and she believes that she's out of options - she nearly kills herself by draining the O2.

when she finally is able to motivate herself to break through her predicament, it's after she prays for a dead sexy middle-aged astronaut to say hello to her daughter for her and let her know that everything is alright. she's able to establish some sort of emotional destination for her loss and finally move on, rather than drifting about, waiting to die. it's just after this point that she finally makes it the Tiangong (sp?) craft, which is already being pulled down toward Earth's atmosphere. and then when she's on the beach, it has symbolism in more ways than one of her regaining a normal sense of balance and weight.

it's not a straight up allegory or anything, it's just a guiding theme. also it's the title of the film.

*blows a smoky space bubble, listens to lee perry at 75% speed*

*snare echo*

i'm a huge brian de palma fan, and i can't believe anyone actually prefers mission to mars to... well, to fucking anything

I greatly prefer Mission to Mars to ... well, The Untouchables and Redacted, to name two.

(Which is another clear-cut case, I guess, of BDP super-fans doing BDP no favor with their opinions.)

it's just after this point that she finally makes it the Tiangong (sp?) craft, which is already being pulled down toward Earth's atmosphere

Despite the outrage from orbital mechanics, I thought it was neat that each point on her path was lower down the gravity well.

although technically she needs to slow down to descend to a lower orbit. she should fire her rockets away from the direction of travel to descend. i assume that's why they fudged it and had them all at the same altitude.

I was wondering if the Russian debris was strong enough to deorbit everything - metaphor for the stupid meaningless randomness (i.e. her child dying in an accident)? By the time she's on the Chinese station, it's a minute from re-entry.

Probably best to pass the thread bong around again.

this was awesome!

thoughts:
- sandy b was great and her character stuff was so simple and effective, something about the dead daughter stuff and the awful banality of the story of her playground death really hit me and i felt carried the movie emotionally
- kind of the perfect george c role
- h4a said:
i thought the placement of music was pretty well done overall - it helps audiences who are used to noisy space scenes by using music as sound effects. there was a cool interplay there in i think the ISS sequence where she was climbing around the outside and the debris was hitting and the music was going, and whenever she touched the craft you'd hear the sound through her suit. it seemed designed to play off each other there.

and this is totally true, i was actually marvelling at how the score sort of substituted for the sound effects. and i liked the text at the beginning about how hard it is to survive in space, that casually mentions the no-sound-in-space thing; my feeling is that was put there entirely to prepare the audience for the soundlessness

- kinda wished that the last shot revealed a bunch of ewoks

how about the dude's head with a hole right through it

the little droplets of fire

ping pong paddles in the chinese station

i loved that when they get to the russian station one pod is gone, implying that they made it out, but that you never hear that story

how about the dude's head with a hole right through it

rated pg-13!

all i could think about was how how much ptsd sandy bee would have to deal with afterwards

I think Tom Hanks made off with all of Sandy B's PTSD.

haha me too. fucked for life

on the second viewing i noticed there was a retainer floating around the space shuttle

ya i saw that

I think Tom Hanks made off with all of Sandy B's PTSD.

― midnight outdoor nude frolic up north goes south (Eric H.), Thursday, October 10, 2013 2:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would also have been cool if at the end, when she looks up, she sees starved tom hanks and wilson standing there

ha yeah the retainer got a weird nervous laugh the screening i was at

on my second viewing i also saw the exact moment when shareef dies, its sad

i noticed that too jeez what were you doing during your first viewing

afraid to go drinking with ILXors bcz u know Gravity spoilers

it's this week's Breaking Bad finale

trying to breathe and slow my heartbeat rate xp

I thought we all agreed that the thread would start allowing spoilers on Monday.

on my second viewing i also noticed that they were in space

crazy movie

haha

wait, what scene were they in space?

wouldn't want to spoil it for you... you'll just have to see it agian and look carefully like i did

; )

I liked seeing the continents in strange poses

didnt notice any continents

also cool was how in a lot of shots, the astronauts are sideways or upside down but it all feels 'normal' and not jarring

xp lol

did you cringe watching it for the 2nd time seeing clooney waste all that fuel spinning aroudn the hubble having fun

i paid more attention to how much juice he has left (think he says he's only used 30%, give my compliments etc.)

i kinda cringed that they wasted fuel going back to visit the shuttle, if they had made straight for the ISS i bet ol' george would have made it, but i guess protocol demands that they affirmatively had to make sure there were no survivors

there was one scene that emotionally took my breath away, I first felt betrayed by the filmmakers and then flayed alive afterward

it was the scene with the alien

pretty crazy how the alien just ripped david's head off... no explanation

i paid more attention to how much juice he has left (think he says he's only used 30%, give my compliments etc.)

i kinda cringed that they wasted fuel going back to visit the shuttle, if they had made straight for the ISS i bet ol' george would have made it, but i guess protocol demands that they affirmatively had to make sure there were no survivors

― 乒乓, Thursday, October 10, 2013 3:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya that stressed me out

also i was thinking... nasa could just equip each astronaut w/ a giant parachute. probably an easier and more economical way of getting down to earth than an escape pod, when u think about it...

hole in face was mega haunting

friend said his performing arts high-school son was disappointed in this, bcz Bullock.

(he's also taught the kid to love Pauline Kael and hate Stanley Kauffmann, so we all fight a lot)

there goes the performing arts high school son audience

hole in face was mega haunting

― HOOS it because...of steen???? (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, October 10, 2013 3:35 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

floating the picture of the dude next to him afterwards was a bit much

realized that the uncanny valley effect of cgi humans is actually kind of perfect for approximating what humans flash frozen by space look like

also i was thinking... nasa could just equip each astronaut w/ a giant parachute. probably an easier and more economical way of getting down to earth than an escape pod, when u think about it...

NASA proposed something like that. Meet MOOSE (a.k.a. Man Out Of Space Easiest): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

http://rocketry.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/moose.jpg

god imagine falling to earth in this

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3b/Operation_MOOSE_%28figure_111%29.PNG/250px-Operation_MOOSE_%28figure_111%29.PNG

oh man... i'm so smart i should work at nasa

imagine falling to earth in anything

lol @ neil degrasse tyson being a big look-at-me attention hog about this movie btw

*imagines falling to earth in a controlled manner aboard a computer controlled craft piloted by experts*

This is awesome!

Neil DeGrasse Tyson is kind of an annoying, pompous dude in general. ~Edgy~ thing to say on the internet, I know, but I really don't like him.

yeah i generally appreciate his position as a cool science guy that some young people admire (need about a billion more of those kind of people) but his latest series of tweets made me barf

"should be called zero gravity!" good one neil!!

its not even true, they're in orbit the whole time no, and gravity plays a rather large part esp towards the end

lol @ neil degrasse tyson being a big look-at-me attention hog about this movie btw

― socki (s1ocki), Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:43 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, gravity has more than one meaning, so.

ppl at amnh says he is incredibly weird and awful in person

seriously, xp

gravity is acceleration is gravity. read your general relativity, so called "dr" tyson.

i thought he was joking with that stuff at first. i mean, is really pretending that there's no such thing as artistic license and that the film would have been better if the spacecraft weren't in line of sight from each other? that's just stupid. but then he went on to the stupid thing about the existence of 2001 (one of my favorite films ever) being a reason that no one should be excited about a space movie again. uh wut

regardless of his intentions it reinforces some people's view of science as a boring path that sucks the fun out of everything. maybe someone from hollywood should critique one of his published journal articles from a popular entertainment value perspective

THAT'LL SHOW NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

eh i didn't really mind his tweets, he just seemed like an astronaut w/ an actual social media platform to broadcast from

i lol'd at this bit from cuaron's interview:

The astronauts [who served as consultants] saw bits and pieces of what we were doing. They were exasperated [for instance] about why [Bullock and Clooney’s characters] are not bringing their solar shields down! [I said,] "Well, you won’t see their faces then, so I’m not going to do it." No, [the consultants said], they would go blind from the sun, they could not see, it is impossible. The funny thing is that you tell them something like, There’s a special polarizer on the shield, and they’re like, Oh my! In the [Russian spacecraft] Soyuz, I added one window. Why? Because I wanted to see the Earth in space! One of the toughest things in the film was the cause and effect of microgravity and no resistance, and you ask them, How does a tether react, you pull one, how does it go? — and they would be like, “Yes, but that window is not there.” I know; we talked about it. What do you think about the tether? “Fine, but that window, I’ve been in three missions, that window—” I know, I know, I’m very aware that window is not there, it was a conscious decision! [laughs] But they just … On the other hand, we invited them to the set, and they were just so in awe of everything we’d re-created, and we were like, Well, we changed this, and they said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” They were in awe. Those guys are amazing.

tyson's has published 5 refereed papers. the last one was in 1993. it has a grand total of zero citations.

maybe it was so good that there was nothing else to be said about the subject

http://www.vulture.com/2013/09/director-alfonso-cuaron-on-making-gravity.html

xp it's got a pretty great title fwiw

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993A%26A...275..630T

some good stuff on cuaron's fondness of the long take:

After Great Expectations, Cuarón was, ­Carlos recalls, chafing against the “formal ways of directing, the graphic grammar. I remember when we were outlining Y Tu Mamá También, it was when he got this idea that he wanted to do these very long takes—this thing basically inspired by the French New Wave.” García Bernal, who has gone on to become a de facto member of the Cuarón family, starring years later in Carlos’s feature debut and, last month, signing on to star in Jonas’s, recalls the shooting of a climactic scene near the end of the movie when his character and Luna’s and Verdú’s are engaged in a passionate conversation outside a restaurant (“right before they all get inside of each other,” he jokes). He remembers it as being at least eight straight pages of unbroken dialogue in the script. Cuarón was nervous about whether it could work, and even if it did, how it might fit within the rhythm of the rest of the film. They rehearsed the scene for six hours, then did about twenty takes, all night long. Looking back, García Bernal is still amazed. “There were no close-ups—nobody dares to do that, especially in an emotional scene,” he says. “I remember this moment when [Verdú’s character] turns into the camera, and she starts basically dancing into the camera, and it’s like she breaks the fourth wall!” It’s a haunting, beautiful sequence that, he says, “goes into the books of cinema.”

One of Cuarón’s best friends is the filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, a former D.J. from Mexico City who met Cuarón after soliciting his help on an early draft of what would become the Oscar-nominated Amores Perros. He says Cuarón’s commitment to the sustained shot is about philosophy more than virtuosity. “Our life is lived in a constant uncut point of view, only interrupted when we close our eyes to dream,” Iñárritu says. “We are not editing our life. It’s only when we remember our life that we edit it. Alfonso is interested in this point of view where the audience’s point of view integrates with the characters’ point of view in a way that there are no interpretations. It’s more pure.”

Even before Hitchcock, filmmakers have been exploring this technique, but Cuarón’s dedication to it is unusually intense. It’s an approach to filmmaking that recognizes the medium’s most basic quality, its ability to create a scene, primarily visually, and nourish it completely, even at the expense of plot development and characterization. And while Gravity is, by far, Cuarón’s most extreme experimentation in this regard, he could not have made it without making Children of Men, the paranoid thriller about an infertile human race in 2027. The movie is full of atmospherics and includes an excruciating four-minute single-take scene where a car ride into the woods turns catastrophic; to shoot it, the car had to be retrofitted so that its seats could rise and move the five characters out of the way of the camera, situated in the middle, which was effectively the sixth passenger, reacting as any person might. But the movie’s character development was thin, and when Clive Owen read the script, he was inclined to pass. “I couldn’t find my way into the part,” he remembers. It took sitting down with Cuarón and hearing him talk about his vision for the film to change his mind.

The idea was to steep a potentially farcical film in extreme reality, through the use of photojournalism as a design reference and through the single-take shot. “Alfonso was crazy about using ambient light so everything looked as natural as possible,” Owen says, and they would sit around waiting until exactly the right conditions, fielding increasingly frantic calls from the studio. The climactic scene was a seven-minute continuous shot that moved inside and outside, across space, through an explosion. Each time they filmed it, the set took half a day to reset. On the third take, “we just knew we fucking nailed it,” Owen remembers. “And Alfonso came by and said, ‘Oh, no, oh, no—there’s blood on the lens of the camera!’ And Chivo says, ‘¡Cabrón! That’s not a bad thing! It’s fantastic!’ ” The first time he saw the scene, Owen says, he knew immediately that it “would be one of the films that I’d be most proud of at the end of a career.”

love his description in that article--"an imax documentary gone wrong"

It’s a haunting, beautiful sequence that, he says, “goes into the books of cinema.”

I won't go that far but it's an amazing moment.

ok -- should i see this on 'the biggest drive-in theatre screen in america'? it won't be 3d but maybe it's the closest i can get in my quest to SEE IT RIGHT

from the weekly email i get from the maniac who runs it

Our main Attraction is "G R A V I T Y" rated PG13.This science fiction Fantasy adventure and thriller stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, and as all the critics and moviegoers have said in their rave reviews, "...see it on the biggest screen possible...!" Well, that would be here, at the Bengies Drive-In Theatre!

Go for it.

Bengies! Never been myself, but make sure you read up on the rule list if it's your first time.

i don't think this would be good at a drive in.

for reasons of sound editing and mixing i would absolutely not recommend seeing this at a drive in

Good points. I retract my "Go for it."

Yep. Unless your car is equipped with Dolby 7.1, skip the drive-in (at least for the first screening).

It would be fun to watch at a drive-in with no sound, during the Pleiades.

thx guys, also DAMMIT

Bengies! Never been myself, but make sure you read up on the rule list if it's your first time.

― circa1916, Saturday, October 12, 2013 11:01 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i've been. you should really go if you're local, it's gr8

ahahaha

i'm going to see this tonight, and the theatre a block away has (fake) imax

and they're using it on captain phillips

they are the captain now

saw it again yesterday in real imax at lincoln sq. nice.

that ender's game trailer is the worst, loudest thing i've ever seen though.

did you notice the second time around that the movie's actually set in space??

wherever she was, it was extremely dark

sometimes it was bright

not sure i buy the "space" theory

Kinda wanna see this again. The only first run movies I've seen in the theater twice were 'The Great Outdoors' and 'Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.'

The only movie I've seen more than once is Gone Fishing, and I've never even seen it

My standing record is, um, Titanic at 5 times.

Dismissive review from my dad!

(I'm not sure for whose benefit he wrote this? Maybe just his own. It was attached to an e-mail he sent me.)

A Review of Gravity directed by Alfonso Cuaron and starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

--Last stanza of Robert Frost’s “Desert Places”

OK, I’ll readily admit that I was modestly scared by the prospect of drifting untethered in outer space, dodging a debris shower and watching the lunar capsule and all hope for survival recede in the stratosphere. Direct Alfonso Cuaron has certainly taken full advantage of his multi-million dollar budget and cutting edge computer animation to position the audience in a place that everyone, or almost everyone, will never be. I’m certainly not expecting an invitation letter from underfunded NASA inviting me to join a team investigating whether a Robert Frost post can be interpreted differently in a gravity free zone.

So after this initial fleeting identification with the predicament of veteran commander George Clooney and “brilliant” scientist Sandra Bullock, I found myself fighting boredom and hoping that a preposterous alien might arrive on the scene and rescue – or better yet destroy – this wandering space ship. Clooney acts as though he just walked in from the set of Oceans 11 and carried with him his signature suave and ironic pose. He treats this life or death predicament as though it was yet another blob of toothpaste that floats around the capsule after being clumsily released from the tube. And Sandra Bullock is as earnest and plucky as ever, not quite Miss Congeniality but determined throughout to escape the death sentence by learning the instrumentation panels of both a Russian and Chinese module where she finds refuge after her home spacecraft is jettisoned. This is no problem for the actress who cajoled an indifferent but huge black kid into becoming a professional football player in The Blind Side. In the only moment of emotional vulnerability, she reveals to her partner that she had a daughter who died, and then it’s quickly back to reading the manuals. The ghost of the cool and self-sacrificing Clooney appears to her in a dream sequence, providing her with the jolt of optimism to shake her out of her despair. I’m not giving anything away to say that she makes it; the conclusion is there from the beginning. When her capsule burns through the atmosphere and plunges into the sea, she swims a short distance to what looks like an uninhabited coast. I was hoping that out of the scrub brush would come some of those Somali pirates who grabbed Captain (Tom Hanks) Phillips’ boat and really give her a scare. No doubt within a few hours she’d organize them into teams for a friendly soccer game.

Amidst all of the wonderful photographs of “the big blue marble” from outer space and the 3-D simulation of weightlessness, there’s not a single idea in this film. It’s a survival film stripped to its decontextualized essence: will the escapee make it over the falls with his body intact? Will the wounded soldier make it back to his platoon? By contrast, the very much earthbound and low-tech 127 Hours, in which a hiker played by James Franco has to literally cut off his arm to escape his entrapment by a giant boulder, ventures into the desert places of its protagonist to reveal a whole range of emotional responses to imminent death. In its unwillingness to explore the desert places of its astronaut heroes, Gravity never even gets close to the gravitas is seems to desire. Just another piece of movie debris floating around in oxygen-starved popular culture.

I'm sure your dad is awesome and all, but 127 Hours sucked.

I didn't think it sucked per se, but it felt more pointless to me than Gravity did.

I liked both movies quite a bit!

xp Not that I got much of a *point* out of Gravity beyond its visceral pleasures, but its pleasures were more pleasurable.

if we're thinking in terms of genre i think Castaway is by some distance the best of these kinds of movies but its canvas is much bigger. tho Gravity also seems part of the "recovering from grief" type of story, as well.

i also think insofar as Gravity has *points* they are intrinsic to its leanness and relative straightforwardness. but im not sure i like discussing art in terms of "meaning" since any good work of art is in at best a non-reductive relationship to its "meaning."

really enjoyed this.

127 Hours would have worked if James Franco had eaten himself and there was nothing left.

omg finally I can open this thread

this movie ruled, I didn't even mind the super overdone rebirth metaphor because it ruled so hard