Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#51 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:29 am

The Alice problem was directly threatened by the father problem

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#52 Post by Foam » Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:20 am

I'll give this a go: The crux of the Alice problem ("will her affection replace my mother's?") was already resolved and could only be superficially threatened by the father problem. As LQ notes, the father's threat barely effects their relationship (because the nature of the relationship has already been established and kids will just keep sneaking into each others' bedrooms). The movie has everything out of whack. Had the Alice problem structured the movie rather than the father problem, the Alice problem would have been a more dynamic force of narrative energy within the movie (rather than the charming but weightless thing it is) and the fathers-letting-us-hang-out problem would have been used as merely one obstacle to overcome before other more pressing obstacles closer to what the film wants its heart to be. As is, the father-letting-us-hang-out problems are placed to seem like bigger problems than they really are and it makes several scenes feel off.

At this point I think I might be demanding that the film to be far too different from what it is than is reasonable (mostly because I can't imagine what a film with the narrative symmetry I'm asking for would look like) so I'll just go on ahead and accept that I just fundamentally don't like "what it is" on a base level.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#53 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:09 am

I don't know about you, but when I was in middle school, I would have been a lot more comfortable being able to see a girl more often and in more varied scenarios than her needing to sneak out of her house and into mine, but if you say so.

This is really starting to feel like analyzing "The Three Bears" or something. Can porridge ever truly be just right?

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#54 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:25 pm

mfunk9786 wrote: The father-son dynamic in this film was its structure, but not its heart.
This. We know just enough to understand why Joe does what he does and how he's feeling when he's with his friends. This movie is not about his relationship with his father, it's about his relationship with his friends and the burgeoning awakening with a cute girl. All we need to know is that he's sad and his dad doesn't understand him. Abrams isn't out to create a family drama at all, and I think foam got derailed by a minor quibble and let it take over the rest of the picture. The Parents aren't supposed to be 3 dimensional characters...they are supposed to support the kids' adventure.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#55 Post by HistoryProf » Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:45 pm

for what it's worth, at work today everyone 35 or older who saw it over the weekend LOVED it in a way i've never heard movies talked about there. Those younger liked it well enough, but didn't quite have the same enthusiasm us older folks had - men and women. Thought this was interesting from boxofficemojo:
Distributor Paramount Pictures' exit polling indicated that 71 percent of Super 8's audience was over 25 years old and 56 percent was male.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#56 Post by Shrew » Wed Jun 22, 2011 12:14 am

Saw this today and enjoyed it a great deal, but I do want to touch on Foam's complaints a bit. I think the Joe/Alice relationship is much more the heart of the film (and it works wonderfully) and what structures it, with the father/son relationship being secondary and more of a framing device. It links the largely independent hijinks of the kids to the greater struggle of the town, but it quickly ceases being the emotional core, and as it doesn't get much time or investment I can understand it causing frustration when it does pop back up.

Abrams does have a tendency (good or bad) to overfill his films with minor conflicts/relationships/tensions, perhaps leftover from his TV projects. There's the silly throwaway conversation about some nervous habit between two of the MI sidekicks in MI:3, or Spock and Uhura's relationship (what? why in the hell?) in Star Trek, or the various crushes and whatnot in Cloverfield. It's as if Abrams spends each project drawing lines between all the characters and then trying to make up a label or conflict for each. It makes perfect sense for a TV show with the space to explore all of that, but his movies at time feel overstuffed and the beats of these relationships play like a checklist, especially as most don't go anywhere (the fat kid whining about his feelings to Joe) or come to a nice and tidy resolution all of a sudden (the two dads, Joe/dad at the end).

Now I think Abrams is still deft enough to pull this off most of the time, but I could see someone like Foam getting annoyed at the mere existence of those cluttering beats, no matter how well done.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#57 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:19 am

Another great fake poster:

Image

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Brian C
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#58 Post by Brian C » Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:10 am

Is Elle making the train levitate? Magneto is a teenage girl in the new X-Men reboot?

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#59 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:14 am

Don't Super H8

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Brian C
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#60 Post by Brian C » Wed Jun 29, 2011 12:03 pm

#-o You must have been saving that one for weeks. And I walked right into it!

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#61 Post by Jeff » Thu Jun 30, 2011 10:54 am

Can't believe how much I enjoyed this, for all the reasons that have already been elucidated: the sharply defined kid personalities, the great performances thereof, and the magically-conjured evocation of both the time period and the movies it spawned (born in '76).

Only a couple of quibbles. Abrams has got to cut out the ridiculous blue lens flares. I enjoy the occasional natural lens flare, but he's clearly inserting them digitally now, and it's reached the point of obnoxious distraction. Also, I wish that there had been less of a reveal of the sentient contents of the train. I believe that things are much scarier when obscured (The Jaws Principal), and the CGI took me out of my nostalgia-fueled reverie.

Add me to the chorus of huzzahs for Elle Fanning. After this and Somewhere, I'm firmly convinced that she is one of the best actresses working today, regardless of age.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#62 Post by ianungstad » Thu Jun 30, 2011 11:25 am

I had the same problem with this film that I did with District 9. The first half of the film promised something a little bit more thoughtful and well crafted; a break from formula. The second half of both pictures devolve into your typical summer blockbuster, with quasi-invincible characters dodging explosions and bullets. As the film focused increasingly on the military and the alien, I found myself tuning out of the picture.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#63 Post by Murdoch » Thu Jun 30, 2011 11:49 am

^ Same here, by the final act the movie the kids were making becomes non-existent, and as that was what I found most entertaining once it fell from the movie so did my interest.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#64 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jun 30, 2011 12:49 pm

Jeff wrote:...Abrams has got to cut out the ridiculous blue lens flares. I enjoy the occasional natural lens flare, but he's clearly inserting them digitally now, and it's reached the point of obnoxious distraction.
Did you see his STAR TREK? Every freakin' shot had lens flare in that film. I thought he toned it down a bit in SUPER 8. He claims much of the TREK flares are organic, but I'm thinking he has stock in this company.

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Jeff
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#65 Post by Jeff » Thu Jun 30, 2011 12:55 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:Did you see his STAR TREK? Every freakin' shot had lens flare in that film. I thought he toned it down a bit in SUPER 8.
I did see Star Trek, and I certainly noticed the lens flares there, but they actually stood out more to me in Super 8. I think it was because they actually obscured the actors in several scenes. Either way, his use of them is just plain silly. It's like in an effort to develop an auteurial signature, he said, "I know! I'll draw blue lines all over every fucking thing whether it makes sense or not! That'll be 'my thing'."

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#66 Post by Gregory » Thu Jun 30, 2011 1:46 pm

J.J. Abrams wrote:But I love the idea that the future was so bright it couldn't be contained in the frame.
[the flares] to me, were a fun additional touch that I think, while overdone, in some places, it feels like the future is that bright.
Sounds like someone's a little obsessed with a certain song by Timbuk3.
I want [to create] the sense that, just off camera, something spectacular is happening.
Interesting "signature." Most directors would generally try to get people to think about and pay attention to what's happening in the frame.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#67 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jun 30, 2011 1:58 pm

Gregory wrote:
I want [to create] the sense that, just off camera, something spectacular is happening.
Interesting "signature." Most directors would generally try to get people to think about and pay attention to what's happening in the frame.
That must be why I wasn't impressed by STAR TREK; all the spectacular stuff was happening off-camera.

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domino harvey
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#68 Post by domino harvey » Thu Jun 30, 2011 1:58 pm

I don't get the animosity for the flares. I don't recall any of you lining up to pile onto Punch-Drunk Love

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Jeff
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#69 Post by Jeff » Thu Jun 30, 2011 2:09 pm

domino harvey wrote:I don't get the animosity for the flares. I don't recall any of you lining up to pile onto Punch-Drunk Love
In PDL they seemed suitable for the artifice of the film, an intentional device that was an extension of the brightly-colored interstitals. Anderson doesn't deploy them at random in every film he makes.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#70 Post by Matt » Thu Jun 30, 2011 2:26 pm

I loved every single lens flare in Star Trek, but felt they were a little distracting here. But if this film is, in any sense, a tribute to the Spielberg of Close Encounters, lens flares are entirely appropriate. One might even say that Vilmos Zsigmond wrote the book on lens flares with that movie.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#71 Post by Jeff » Thu Jun 30, 2011 2:46 pm

Matt wrote:I loved every single lens flare in Star Trek, but felt they were a little distracting here. But if this film is, in any sense, a tribute to the Spielberg of Close Encounters, lens flares are entirely appropriate. One might even say that Vilmos Zsigmond wrote the book on lens flares with that movie.
I thought they worked for both of those films too (a little over the top in Star Trek). Lens flares coming from a flashlight, as in Close Encounters, seem perfectly reasonable. Any discernible light source will do. Again, I loved Super 8, but I thought the flares were a major distraction. It was really just the sequence immediately preceding the train crash were they really bothered me -- streaked all across the screen, through actors faces, no matter the angle, for an extended period.
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Won't you guide my sleigh tonight, Elle?

They just feel so completely artificial here. Some guy blogged about all the ones that appeared in the trailer alone. I like the ones coming from the projector, headlights, etc. It's only the random blue streaks that irritate.

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#72 Post by Roger Ryan » Thu Jun 30, 2011 4:02 pm

The fact that we're even talking about this (or, rather, there are blogs and web articles devoted to it) means that the lens flares probably shouldn't be in Abrams' films to the extent they are. Why would any filmmaker want us to be noticing something that isn't related to a story point, performance or mood? Even beautiful lighting and cinematography should come second to how the story is playing out in a film. I've known a few tech geeks in the past who have commented on the cool lens flare you can get with anamorphic lenses and I like the look as well in films like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or ALIEN when characters shine a flashlight and it hits the lens. But the latest STAR TREK just drove me nuts with the refracted light and I was fearful of what SUPER 8 was going to look like. Fortunately, it wasn't overkill for me, but I was still taken out of the experience every time the blue line appeared.

I do appreciate the "truth in advertising" demonstrated by the SUPER 8 poster and display ad - you'll notice the blue lens flare is featured prominently. I'd say the flare had about as much screen time as Kyle Chandler.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#73 Post by knives » Thu Jun 30, 2011 4:11 pm

Roger Ryan wrote:The fact that we're even talking about this (or, rather, there are blogs and web articles devoted to it) means that the lens flares probably shouldn't be in Abrams' films to the extent they are. Why would any filmmaker want us to be noticing something that isn't related to a story point, performance or mood? Even beautiful lighting and cinematography should come second to how the story is playing out in a film.
I better tell that to Axelrod.

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#74 Post by domino harvey » Fri Jul 01, 2011 3:28 pm

In the latest reason why I love Tumblr, I was informed today that the guy who plays the photoshop stoner was also the little blonde kid from 7th Heaven :shock:

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Re: Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011)

#75 Post by Murdoch » Fri Jul 01, 2011 3:38 pm

I knew I'd seen him before somewhere

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