now that FURIOSA is out on VOD I wanted to clarify what I meant by "mini-oners," IE Spielbergian shots that effortlessly combine multiple setups but aren't full-bore tracking shots, by sharing some of the best in the movie, starting with this one:
FURIOSA (shockingly) begins with a series of longer-takes, with Miller instantly differentiating the visual language and rhythm from the cut-cut-cut kineticism of FURY ROAD. This shot begins as a close-up before craning to an epic tableau, the visual climax of the opening scene:
This shot of Dementus casing Gastown might be one of the most Spielberg-feeling shots of the movie, beginning as a tight medium, moving into a two-shot, craning into a wide, tracking forward with a group, then craning over a cliff-face into another huge wide shot:
This shot is only 15 seconds long, but FURIOSA has many (many) dozens just like it, the camera effortlessly snaking through the action with total clarity. The "stowaway" set-piece is almost all shots just like this one, it's an action masterpeice but also of shot design:
I also have to reshare this clip, which has already widely circulated Twitter:
but one of my favorite oners in FURIOSA is immediately after the vehicular acrobatics of that "stowaway" set-piece, Miller hits the emergency break (sorry) with a near minute-long take to capture Furiosa confronting the loneliness of The Wasteland in a way only a longer take can:
The sneakiest mini-oner in FURIOSA might be this one, which begins as a two-shot of Jack and Furiosa, only to glide between Immortan Joe's entourage mid-debate, constantly reframing speakers. It's the most old-school "moving master" style shot in the film, down to a profile view:
I wanted to save the longest, most complex and possibly best "oner" (also **SPOILERS**) in FURIOSA for last, which tracks from a defeated Furiosa and Jack into Dementus' monologue, then their embrace, followed by his torture by motorcycle, to Furiosa strung up. It's extraordinary
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is it safe to say that I thought DUNE: PART TWO was exhilarating and rousing cinema but sometimes at the cost of over-simplifying the moral complexity of the book, and at its worst felt like a didactic caricature of radicalized belief rather than a moving deconstruction of it
There's a lot in DUNE: PART TWO I love, but I struggled with how cleanly Villeneuve points the moral compass of the storytelling: anyone "pro Messiah" is unfeelingly evil (Lady Jessica) or comically blind (Stilgar) and anyone "anti Messiah" is noble and sympathetic (Chani).
Chani has been reduced to a pull-string doll who every other scene recites how much she hates prophecies and messiahs, with little to no interiority to speak of. Nearly nobody besides Paul has an arc in DUNE: PART TWO, and instead their rigid beliefs are either validated or not.
Revisited SORCERER and again just eviscerated by it. Freidkin turns the jungle into a malignant presence, causality and fate manifest as pure elemental terror. Some of the wildest, most incomprehensibly captured footage in the history of movies. For me, Freidkin's greatest film.
SORCERER is as much a horror movie as THE EXORCIST. Friedkin's hyper-vivid, totally tactile sense of cinematic style makes his nightmares feel real, every location oozing expressionist threat, danger and malice. Sections of it are among the most physically intense I've ever seen.
I don't have time to do a full-bore thread on SORCERER, but this wonderful essay by my man @aHeartOfGould is as definitive as it gets
Something weird is happening with box office tracking. Others have pointed it out, but ~all~ live-action superhero movies are underperforming tracking, while most non-superhero movies are making more. Something is broken. I made a list of most major releases so far this year:
Tracking always has a certain margin of error. It's rarely perfect. But two things strike me as especially unusual: the discrepancy of what movies over or under perform (IE, live-action superhero movies), and when movies fall outside that standard deviation, it's WAY off.
Part of it is surely that tracking is getting less reliable data. I'm guessing that's partly how telemarketing surged during the pandemic, and phone carriers now constantly flag spam (it's called STIR/SHAKEN), but that doesn't explain the full picture of what's happening.
With THE FLASH, ELEMENTAL and TRANSFORMERS underperforming, the hardest lesson for studios is if an audience isn't given a strong reason to see something, they simply will not go. "Let's just go to the movies" does not exist. We need movies that demand the big screen experience.
There's a reason ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is crushing it: it's a true audio-visual spectacle that rewards the biggest screens. Movies need to justify the big screen experience more than ever, and I hope Hollywood takes the right lessons to approve visually bold programming.
This summer is proving studios can't throw money at franchised projects and bank on a return: many of the biggest hits cost a below-average 100 million (MARIO, SPIDER-VERSE, JOHN WICK, the upcoming BARBIE & OPPENHEIMER). It's not about cost, it's about appeal, artistry, or both.
This is obvious to say, but the color and stylization of design, movement and creativity that's only possible in animation nearly never translates to live action, and in the process mostly reaffirms the beauty and possibility of animation as a medium. I wish they'd just stop.
It speaks to how incredible the animation was in ATLA that Joaquim Dos Santos––who directed half the finale, and a bunch otherwise––just co-directed ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. This show's look and rhythm is so animation-specific, live-action will always struggle to do it justice.
I genuinely believe adapting animation to live-action is harder than adapting literature: it's a transposition between totally different visual mediums. That requires a ground-up reimagining of how things should look, move and feel like, and its a near impossible balance.