The Odyssey is the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras – a system of very heavy and loud cameras that capture a sharper, brighter and higher-resolution content.
Someone here will be able to eplain the “loud” part to us all?
The Odyssey is the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras – a system of very heavy and loud cameras that capture a sharper, brighter and higher-resolution content.
Someone here will be able to eplain the “loud” part to us all?
Yep. They are big film cameras that give better resolution by using a lot more film area per frame. The film goes through them pretty quickly so a reel of 70mm film goes through in 3 minutes. They are mechanically noisy enough to often need a bulky external sound proofing pod.
This….. If you’re using the actual *film* cameras… the things are noisy as hell…
The “IMAX certified” modern digital cameras aren’t, but they have noticeably less resolution when projected on the actual IMAX screens.
Dunno which they actually used for the shoots. Probably both types, with tons of post-processing.
Nowadays you can shoot, and then digitally remove the noise from the camera..
The original IMAX cameras were like that.However the news item I saw about the making of the film showed pretty small cuboid boxes and I’m assuming they were digital cameras. Certainly what we know as ‘IMAX’ these days is digital projection in normal cinemas rather than the enormous screens like the one in Bradford movie museum.
But digital filming and digital projection are two different things. Nolan likes film because of how it looks. It isn’t just about resolution, but how film reacts to light differently to digital.
Personally, I don’t really care. I think Roger Deakins films like Sicario, Blade Runner 2049 and Skyfall look amazing and they were all shot on digital. But I also like Nolan’s films.
The 35mm version was still impressive…
“Nolan recently told Today that it will be “at least” three years until he makes another movie, due to the challenges of The Odyssey’s shoot.”
Looking forward to his biopic of Obama, starting Tom Cruise and Michelle Yeo…
Not just Helen of Detroit, but Viking longships and Batman armour. I wouldn’t watch anything that obviously historically ignorant and reward it with my money. The race swapping is just another example of terrible filmmaking.
Oh, and the claim that it wasn’t actual history being used by the apologists for this abortion doesn’t wash. It is an ancient Greek poem. I expect to see something that actually resembles the period and location.
I think that argument does wash, to be honest. It’s a fantastical tale with monsters and wrathful gods. It’s not a documentary and makes no claim to be one. Conveniently, my daughter is studying the Odyssey itself and I’m told that it contains its own anachronisms about weapons, armour and costumes. Homer wasn’t an archaeologist or historian and (assuming it’s a single person) was writing several centuries after the Trojan wars.
Apparently, Nolan chose the anachronistic costumes as a shortcut for modern audiences. Thanks to films like “300” and “Troy” there’s an widespread assumption about what a Greek warrior looks like. Nolan decided to go with that instead of making effort in the film to counter it.
They used a real Viking longship because they had access to one and thought it preferable to a CGI penteconter.
Anachronism in a film about a poem containing anachronisms. I can’t see the problem myself. I thoroughly enjoyed the film yesterday.
“Apparently, Nolan chose the anachronistic costumes as a shortcut for modern audiences….”
Lazy thinking.
Possibly – or just had other priorities.
This. I expect a film about Greek mythology to make some effort to look like it’s about Ancient Greece. This makes zero effort and a CGI penteconter would be preferable to a Viking longboat. This piece of shit is all about pissing over western European culture and making no pretence about it.
To me, it’s perfectly fine to do what you want with myth, with fiction. Even stories that have some basis in truth, if the telling of them was embellished. I’m also cool with 300 because it is so utterly mental, no-one would confuse it with the truth. Frank Miller’s graphic novel takes history and makes it more of an ideological myth.
It’s when people drop things into history I get pissed off. Medieval queens that are black. No. Fuck off. We know why this is done. It’s to normalise the idea that immigrants were always here.
Anglo Blaxons and a Black Anne Boleyn tells us that the ‘oh it’s only a fictional story’ line is nonsese.
Nearly all of this behaviour is because of state funding, like the BBC or the Arts Council. They don’t work for a paying audience, but for political masters.
Dunkirk, as far as I can recall, had an entirely white cast.
And wasn’t bad, if a little thin on the ground. Remove the DEI requirements for the Academy Awards, and things might change.
But immigrants were always here – since anyone was here. See what Europe looked like at the end of the last glacial period about 12,000 years ago. Almost all of Great Britain was under ice, so nobody could have lived here except in a small region in the south.
Are you really dim enough to think that makes a difference, or are you just a parody?
This country was once uninhabitable so let’s make it uninhabitable again?
Amazing.
Whereas I guess that the race swapping was a fly move to get lots of free publicity.
If you want to contend for an Academy Award, you are absolutely required to include a whole slew of minority in the cast and crew. Also, and unwritten, pander to woke.
I’m surprised they didn’t put Menelaus in a wheelchair.
Well now. If his chariot had a perch, who’d know the diff?
“Helen of Detroit”: /applause!
Yet, despite the PC Hollywood tics – provocative “colour-blind” casting, tranny actor playing (Virgil’s!) Sinon, Penelope’s feminist outburst to her son, the clunky dialogue, etc – I enjoyed the film, because my expectations were very low and it was spectacular.
My gripes include that…Circe was not sinisterly seductive (Odysseus shagged her for a year, IIRC)…Calypso was portrayed as a beach babe rather than a goddess in her cavern…the dialogue…the textual omissions/changes…
Imo, Viking longboats and Mycenaean ships (v. the Argo reconstruction) are superficially similar – even though they involved radically different construction methods and Viking longboats had a keel, were clinker-built etc
As for the armour, most of it was fairly accurate. However, Agamemnon’s was more Star Wars than Mycenaean. And the less said about the armour of the Laestrygonians the better…
All that said, Nolan’s interpretation of the Odyssey as a poem about the trauma of war and the difficulties of returning home has merits…and it might encourage more people to read Homer, whose works are a part of the foundations of Western civilisation.
Did they address the Palaeoloxodon falconeri in the room? Was the greatest warrior diminished by poison, a spell or a curse? Or are we just expected to accept a 5ft weedy, wrinkly, boy [sic] with a curious gait as the fastest, strongest, most rock-hardest sword and shieldsman evah?
When is the NHS going to deliver pixel upgrades to make my eyes able to see this stuff?
Haven’t seen the film yet, but one reviewer said “If it were an inflight movie i’d still walk out”….
Love Inception though.
Going to se it after work tonight, I’m prepared to overlook the historical inaccuracies because I just love spectacle.
“If it were an inflight movie i’d still walk out”
Brilliant!
I would happily watch it again: it’s entertainment, with some PC irritations..
If it’s Hollywood they probably mean “lewd” cameras.
That’s usually GoPro’s…. 😛
PT Barnum was right. Christopher Nolan is a thoroughly incompetent director, but makes bank positioned as the idiot’s idea of a genius auteur. This only works due to extremely low modern standards.
His films are ugly*, his ideas are crap, and you can’t hear any of the dialogue. That’s where the incompetence comes in, muffled dialogue is not a directorial motif, it’s the work of an idiot who has no respect for you, the paying punter.
Nolan’s Batman was a boring, self-important, badly lit nightmare of Christian Bale rasping his guts out. Nolan’s Gotham had all the magic and style of downtown Toronto. Compare and contrast with an actual creative, Tim Burton’s Batman.
Oppenheimer was tedious, unwatchable guff which managed to make the birth of the atom bomb BORING. But the room temp IQs loved it. Hitchcock he is not. Uwe Boll for midwits.
I wouldn’t even pirate his films.
*What’s the point of filming in IMAX when you’re just smearing shit all over the screen? Ugly, poorly lit cinematography doesn’t become eye candy on a bigger canvas. But idiots love it, because “huhuhuh big screen.” A mug’s eyeful.
That’s all. Go away now.
I can’t take Hollywood seriously – though I think its products contribute hugely to Western decadence – but sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
Steve reports, you decide.
Imo the problem with film criticism is that there’s too little of it. John Simon (PBUH) and Armond White belong to a better, smarter period of history when critics weren’t shills and high standards were a good thing. You don’t see much movie criticism at all these days – no, arguing over Chris Nolan’s ridiculous diversity casting isn’t film criticism, but it’s the closest modern movie discussions come to film criticism. (It’s all so tiresome). But bad art proliferates when people don’t hate it enough.
Nolan’s problems as a film maker go far deeper than his lazy, stupid, centrist Dad Hollywood politics. His movies are fundamentally flawed with legendarily bad sound design, inappropriate use of the grimdark shitfilter, the worst lighting I have ever seen in a big budget media production, and a leaden, self-important approach to storytelling.
Oppenheimer was a messy abortion of a film, and yet dull, dull, dull. I don’t care how many mouthbreathers bought tickets, it doesn’t make his movies good. You talk about “spectacle”, but his latest turd is objectively ugly to look at. The average 1950’s sword and sandals flick starring Kirk Douglas had more style, more colour, and more pizazz, with better costumes and sets.
Look at Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. Total Hollywood antidote.
Film critics? What are they? Epiphenomenonal parasites in non-jobs.
Hollywood is Western decadence incarnate, but it can be entertaining.
Meanwhile…Muslims rape…illegals wash up on our shores…the state grows bigger…
Plus one for Armond White.
Hollywood is generally run by incompetent people nowadays. It’s clear what works. You do nothing until you have a solid script. Because changing a script is cheap. Hitchcock spent a long time on story development (9 years on North by Northwest). Disney spent years on Frozen. Pixar spent years on Inside Out. Not full time, but someone gets stuck, parks it, and one day figures out how to fix the problem.
What happens with a lot of movies is someone has a vague idea, and from that, they start production rolling, with a release date. Someone has a few months to write the script. It’s half-baked slop with a poor ending. Studios release this poorly made product, then wonder why audiences don’t trust them. Anyone making films that are at least solid, and doing so reliably gets an audience.
If you do it right, like A24 or Studio Ghibli, you barely have to spend money on marketing, or buying franchises. People will go and see a film because Ghibli made it.
Hollywood is generally run by incompetent people nowadays
And there’s no excuse. They have more money, more staff, and vastly better tools than were available to Tim Burton in 1989. But this is “Gotham City”, according to Nolan:
And here is Tim Burton’s Gotham. One of these visions was brought to us by a real artist, who poured creativity and soul into every shot you see on screen. The other is workmanlike slop. Cinema is a visual medium – a director who doesn’t know how to make his movie look good has failed.
To be fair, different idea of the film.
But the problem with Hollywood is that it’s very wasteful generally. There are amazing tools that allow you to make cheap movies, but they still have massive crews with union demarcation. If an actor isn’t doing something on a set, they can’t hold a microphone. Writers go on strike and you can’t just hire an author to help. The principle-agent runs rife, with everyone trying to bang the talent, directors obsessed with perfection that no-one cares about, actors who think they know about politics ruining your marketing.
There was a time when yeah, doing movie set stuff needed specialist skills, but that’s often gone. But more importantly, there aren’t the studio heads who were entrepreneurs who had built it. They wanted to make money. They got it wrong sometimes, but they had a focus on that and kept everyone in line. If an actor declared themselves to be a communist, well, good luck working here again.
The new independent cinema (and this isn’t like lesbian road trip movies, but aimed more mainstream) are entrepreneurial. What sells, what doesn’t, what matters. What opportunities can we use, how can we make it cheaper?
To be fair, different idea of the film.
Yes, it’s like comparing a Rembrandt to Dogs Playing Poker. Not that Nolan’s work rises to the level of Dogs Playing Poker – kitsch art at least has a soul.
Nolan’s incompetence as a director (he seems to be getting worse with age, as Marsellus Wallace predicted) could be forgiven if his movies at least went for some kind of emotional truth, if they meant something. But they don’t, do they?
His Batman series was nihilistic, not heroic. I have no idea what I was supposed to feel watching Oppenheimer, other than bored. Nuclear weapons are bad or something? Tenet was complete bullshit. He’s no style and no substance.
Obvs, it’s a business and Nolan is successful at the business end. But if a movie doesn’t have a creative reason to exist, it’s just content. And we’re deluged by content, i.e. slop. Nolan is the slopmeister general, I can’t think of a more boring and less compelling take on the Odyssey than making it about PTSD.
I hate Chris Nolan and all his mediocre works, because we should hate the insipid. On t’other, I’m not saying this just to be a curmudgeon. I love Robert Eggers, Zach Cregger and other directors with their own voice. I was very impressed with the young man who made the recent Backrooms movie. There’s lots of talent out there. It’s refreshing to see a film made with care and attention. Like an ornately crafted jewel box, a good film is.
You know, I think, finally, that I might be getting your point… you don’t like Christopher Nolan films. You don’t like his approach, his stylistic choices, his methods or philosophy.
You may have been a tad unclear in earlier posts 😉
Why make a point when you can bludgeon it to death instead?
“Tenet was complete bullshit.”
Tenet took me multiple viewings, but it’s a vibe. It’s like Run Lola Run. You’re not so much following a narrative as something kinetic. I do think it’s a weak film, but I quite enjoy it.
My favourite filmmakers working now are Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-Wook, Guillermo del Toro, David Fincher, Spielberg, James Gunn and Edgar Wright.
True, but casting just isn’t as much fun
Well, I saw it last night ands – idiotic Hollywood-pleasing casting and anachronisms aside, even with a bum-numbing 3 hs + running time, its a spectacle of epic proportions, best enjoyed on the bis screen, but it left me strangely cold, having rather unlikeable characters – at least ‘Troy’ gave you a hero to root for in Achilles. But all the production values were up there on the screen, and some set pieces (the giants, the cyclops, Scilla) were genuinely terrifying. They certainly made me jump!
Can’t figure out how he got another crew for the end ‘sailing off into exile’ bit though. Surely every mariner in Ithaca would have discovered a sudden urgent appointment that weekend!
“. . . but it left me strangely cold . . .”
It’s a Christopher Nolan film.