Friday, August 1, 2008

shoot the wings off the flies

i got to watch "Wanted"... angelina Jolie's latest. i guess there are different ways to reference the movie, but the female half of Brangelina is all that comes to mind at this point. but to be fair, it also stars Morgan freeman, James McAvoy, Common... and Marc Warren (who played Danny Blue in the Hustle series) to name a prominent set.



i couldnt wait to see the movie after i saw the promotional trailer. i dunno wat i was expecting... and i still am not exactly sure how i feel about the movie. The action floods in in tidal waves and the buildup is rollercoaster capable. It's quite a rush... and then it gets a little too "enhanced". the effects were astonishing... almost too astonishing. i like CGI as much as the next movie buff, but the beauty of CGI comes from its subtleness... u know it's there, and you're thankful to the guys with frilly hair and glasses for putting those effects there for you. But you dont want your brain to keep throwing reality check exceptions anytime u see an effect in a movie... but that's exactly what mine kept doing.

case in point, the part where:
wesley drives his car over fox's car,
his car flips in the air,
he shoots the "bad guy" (who's ironically listening to 'dont say goodbye') thru the sunroof of the limo
his car lands back on it's tyres and they drive off.

No commotion, nothing. it was a smooth op. uh, yeah... right.
i know people say what about the matrix? well what about the Matrix? in The matrix thatwas the whole point. they were in the matrix! no natural laws applied. Wanted on the other hand, is set in what looked like downtown New York. Should we do the math? maybe not.

A couple of weeks ago i sat in a Digital video seminar and the speaker showed a 3 minute clip of a project made by two students who were eager to show off all the digital effects they had learned over the period. so it was basically a simple sketch crammed with all the special effects they could. For a minute, i felt like i was watching something very similar to that. i was just staring at the screen in awe and shock and amazement and disbelief. it just kept coming... long distance curved bullets, knife fights, splattering heads, flying cars... talking pigs. just kidding 'bout the pigs.



i think my favourite scene was the one where with one bullet all the assasins are knocked out cold, for good, in a circular path. Oh, that was very cool... not because it heralded the end of the movie (or was it? hmm... ) but because it was a subtle cleanly executed effect. a nice way to curve things off - pardon the pun.

i still am not sure exactly what i think about the movie. it had a great cast and a workable plot, a lot of action and adrenalin generation. but was it a bit over the top?
i will say this: it was quite an experience.



1 comment:

Nii Amon said...

hei ANN .. hmm .. yeah wanted was a bit off imho .. i mean the part where they ask mcavoy to shoot past the meat and he fails and jolie stands in front of him and asks him to shoot .. errr .. yeah ..

but, for me, i think that was the point .. it was all about jolie .. the edginess and the extreme moves and all of the X factor .. she made it worthwhile for me ..

i just landed a locally made metal .. going to look for my fly ..