Mission: Impossible Theme Song
The original TV-show
The Tom Cruise films
Let's Go Dancing by Tina Dico and Teitur
Play this while you read the chapter
Read Chapter Twelve here
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
I saw Breaking Dawn last night. Here's my humble opinion of it.
Review of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, part 1
I saw a late showing of the movie on its release day.
I'm a twihard, twimom, fanfic-writing movie-geek. And I was disappointed. Of all the four so far, this one is the weakest in my opinion.
Ditte and I went to see it together and I warned her, that the official reviews are bad. And I was curious to see why the reviews were so harsh.
The theater was almost full - people of all ages and about one guy per two girls. There were laughs and gasps and shrieks in all the right places, and in quite a few of the wrong places. I myself was guilty of laughing at the wrong things. Both Ditte and I applauded, though, when Taylor (poor Taylor) went running topless within the first seven seconds of the movie.
So, why was it such a disappointment?
I went to bed still trying to figure it out. And, since the kids kept me up all night and I had lots of time to think, I have a theory. It's full of spoilers, so don't read on, if you have yet to see it and make your own judgement.
The things I like:
The main-character actors. They all did good. Taylor Lautner was moving and believable in most of his scenes. Kristen did all the mind-numbingly major life-changing scenes with grace and under-acting, that had me convinced all the way. Robert gave such life to the happy, then broken, then desperate husband. And given the premise, that is no small feat! Well done! There were plenty of comic releif-moments from the talented lot of supporting actors and that was good, too! Nice to see Emmett let loose. Loved that!
The story-line and the choice of focus points from the book. The screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg did an okay job of putting the book onto screen. She took some short-cuts, I think, that maybe underestimated the audience, but I can't really give you an example. Maybe when I've seen it again? If I see it again before the DVD-release...
The set-design. The sets and locations were beautiful. Hands down.
So, with pre-production and actual production (filming) being okay, we must look to post-production to find out why it failed.
And here we go with the things I do NOT like:
The music: The soundtrack is good. I have it, listen to it often and like most songs. I DON'T like the original score composed for this movie! It's appalling. The themes (the main melodies) are okay but bland, and the execution is just WAY below par! An example: The 'love'-theme that we hear in the teaser from the honeymoon is played by a guitar and a flute. If the conductor had chosen different instruments, the mood might have been different. Maybe an oboe would have given a more clean, clear and innocent sound? I don't know, but the original score was not good enough.
And it was generally too loud. When Condon (director) chose to use other songs to set some mood, they again were played too loud. Choosing original songs from different artists is a good twilight tradition. Condon keeps the tradition, but out of the four directors of the four films, so far, he does this with the least convincing result. Too bad.
The foley: You know, the sound effects that are linked to the less action packed parts of the movies - footsteps, rustling clothes, doors closing ect. Yeah, that. It was abysmal! Too loud, off time and just really poorly done. WAY too loud! It's supposed to be something that you don't really notice except if it's not there. I do not want to hear vampires - supposedly soundless - clomping up and down stairs. Could someone please just do that over? Maybe use someone from the LOTR-films and then get someone with hearing at the mixing table to put it back in the film. Thank you!
Sound effects: Again, not good enough. This is supposed to assist the CGI and all effects to make them believable. In the sequence where Jacob breaks from the pack, we are supposed to hear a telepathic conversation between the wolves - Jacob and Sam in particular - which is really essential to the whole plot. The voice-alterations that were done made it hard to figure out who was who. They altered the voices too much. Now, I get why they chose not to just put reverb on the voices, but making them so very deep instead, made it confusing.
Visual effects and CGI: This part of a movie is often like house work. When done well, you don't notice it. When done poorly, it stinks. You can quote me on that.
So, in big chunks of the movie, I didn't see any visual effects. Which means they worked and were well done. Sometimes I noticed, but only because I was thinking 'No way, is Kristen Stewart that emaciated' or 'It really looks like Edward is doing CPR on Bella!". Good job on those scenes!
And then there were the scenes where it crashed and burned and where almost painfull to look at. - Jacob running through the woods as a wolf was hilarious to look at. It looked like bad puppeteering in an eighties movie. Bizarre and weird and so very destructive for the plot. Jacob is supposed to be shocked, despaired and afraid for Bella's life, and the audience is laughing because it is filmed in a ridiculous way and the music is loud and much, much too dramatic. Burn. The CGI wolves were okay in many of the scenes, so the running Jacob wolf-puppet was a mystery to me.
Editing: When done right, editing is the making of the art. (See the love-scene in Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh to see superb editing) In some parts of the movie it is working. The whole honeymoon sequence is well timed and cute and funny as a result (just close your ears when the poor 'love'-score is playing). The birthing scene is also well-cut. The rest of the movie is edited in a way that is good for action, but bad for the more relationship setting parts of the storyline. Condon cuts away from faces way too soon on some occasion and the general beat of the cutting - the musicality - was uneven and made it hard to focus. Now, I know that the main editing is never done by the director, but he has a major say in the finished product, so I'm holding Condon respondible.
Mixing: It is when everything is supposed to come together into a beautiful, complete movie. Sound effects, Foley, ADR (additional dialogue recording) and music is added to the finished footage and recorded dialogue. This is where I believe most of the mistakes were made. Just not tight enough and misjudged levels of sound. It is clumsy.
The final score. (** )
In most of the official movie reviews Breaking Dawn has received one star out of four, one star out of five or one star out of six. In my review Breaking Dawn receives - two stars out of five. And those stars are for the actors and for the set design. The rest... not good enough.
Twimom is not angry - she's disappointed.
I saw a late showing of the movie on its release day.
I'm a twihard, twimom, fanfic-writing movie-geek. And I was disappointed. Of all the four so far, this one is the weakest in my opinion.
Ditte and I went to see it together and I warned her, that the official reviews are bad. And I was curious to see why the reviews were so harsh.
The theater was almost full - people of all ages and about one guy per two girls. There were laughs and gasps and shrieks in all the right places, and in quite a few of the wrong places. I myself was guilty of laughing at the wrong things. Both Ditte and I applauded, though, when Taylor (poor Taylor) went running topless within the first seven seconds of the movie.
So, why was it such a disappointment?
I went to bed still trying to figure it out. And, since the kids kept me up all night and I had lots of time to think, I have a theory. It's full of spoilers, so don't read on, if you have yet to see it and make your own judgement.
The things I like:
The main-character actors. They all did good. Taylor Lautner was moving and believable in most of his scenes. Kristen did all the mind-numbingly major life-changing scenes with grace and under-acting, that had me convinced all the way. Robert gave such life to the happy, then broken, then desperate husband. And given the premise, that is no small feat! Well done! There were plenty of comic releif-moments from the talented lot of supporting actors and that was good, too! Nice to see Emmett let loose. Loved that!
The story-line and the choice of focus points from the book. The screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg did an okay job of putting the book onto screen. She took some short-cuts, I think, that maybe underestimated the audience, but I can't really give you an example. Maybe when I've seen it again? If I see it again before the DVD-release...
The set-design. The sets and locations were beautiful. Hands down.
So, with pre-production and actual production (filming) being okay, we must look to post-production to find out why it failed.
And here we go with the things I do NOT like:
The music: The soundtrack is good. I have it, listen to it often and like most songs. I DON'T like the original score composed for this movie! It's appalling. The themes (the main melodies) are okay but bland, and the execution is just WAY below par! An example: The 'love'-theme that we hear in the teaser from the honeymoon is played by a guitar and a flute. If the conductor had chosen different instruments, the mood might have been different. Maybe an oboe would have given a more clean, clear and innocent sound? I don't know, but the original score was not good enough.
And it was generally too loud. When Condon (director) chose to use other songs to set some mood, they again were played too loud. Choosing original songs from different artists is a good twilight tradition. Condon keeps the tradition, but out of the four directors of the four films, so far, he does this with the least convincing result. Too bad.
The foley: You know, the sound effects that are linked to the less action packed parts of the movies - footsteps, rustling clothes, doors closing ect. Yeah, that. It was abysmal! Too loud, off time and just really poorly done. WAY too loud! It's supposed to be something that you don't really notice except if it's not there. I do not want to hear vampires - supposedly soundless - clomping up and down stairs. Could someone please just do that over? Maybe use someone from the LOTR-films and then get someone with hearing at the mixing table to put it back in the film. Thank you!
Sound effects: Again, not good enough. This is supposed to assist the CGI and all effects to make them believable. In the sequence where Jacob breaks from the pack, we are supposed to hear a telepathic conversation between the wolves - Jacob and Sam in particular - which is really essential to the whole plot. The voice-alterations that were done made it hard to figure out who was who. They altered the voices too much. Now, I get why they chose not to just put reverb on the voices, but making them so very deep instead, made it confusing.
Visual effects and CGI: This part of a movie is often like house work. When done well, you don't notice it. When done poorly, it stinks. You can quote me on that.
So, in big chunks of the movie, I didn't see any visual effects. Which means they worked and were well done. Sometimes I noticed, but only because I was thinking 'No way, is Kristen Stewart that emaciated' or 'It really looks like Edward is doing CPR on Bella!". Good job on those scenes!
And then there were the scenes where it crashed and burned and where almost painfull to look at. - Jacob running through the woods as a wolf was hilarious to look at. It looked like bad puppeteering in an eighties movie. Bizarre and weird and so very destructive for the plot. Jacob is supposed to be shocked, despaired and afraid for Bella's life, and the audience is laughing because it is filmed in a ridiculous way and the music is loud and much, much too dramatic. Burn. The CGI wolves were okay in many of the scenes, so the running Jacob wolf-puppet was a mystery to me.
Editing: When done right, editing is the making of the art. (See the love-scene in Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh to see superb editing) In some parts of the movie it is working. The whole honeymoon sequence is well timed and cute and funny as a result (just close your ears when the poor 'love'-score is playing). The birthing scene is also well-cut. The rest of the movie is edited in a way that is good for action, but bad for the more relationship setting parts of the storyline. Condon cuts away from faces way too soon on some occasion and the general beat of the cutting - the musicality - was uneven and made it hard to focus. Now, I know that the main editing is never done by the director, but he has a major say in the finished product, so I'm holding Condon respondible.
Mixing: It is when everything is supposed to come together into a beautiful, complete movie. Sound effects, Foley, ADR (additional dialogue recording) and music is added to the finished footage and recorded dialogue. This is where I believe most of the mistakes were made. Just not tight enough and misjudged levels of sound. It is clumsy.
The final score. (** )
In most of the official movie reviews Breaking Dawn has received one star out of four, one star out of five or one star out of six. In my review Breaking Dawn receives - two stars out of five. And those stars are for the actors and for the set design. The rest... not good enough.
Twimom is not angry - she's disappointed.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
A song teaser for chapter twelve
Chapter twelve is being beta'ed as I type. Then some prereading and then we should be ready to publish.
It'll be the longest chapter yet!
A song to listen to, as you wait:
Tina Dico and Teitur: Let's go dancing
It'll be the longest chapter yet!
A song to listen to, as you wait:
Tina Dico and Teitur: Let's go dancing
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)