Turan review and Cameron rebuttle reprinted here
Trent
Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By KENNETH TURAN TIMES FILM CRITIC
Friday December 19, 1997
To the question of the day--what does $200
million buy?--the
3-hour-and-14-minute "Titanic"
unhesitatingly answers: not enough.
Note that despite the hopes of skeptics,
aghast at the largest film budget of
modern times, money enough to run a
full-dress presidential campaign or put a
serious dent in illiteracy, the answer is
not nothing. When you are willing to build
a 775-foot, 90% scale model of the doomed
ship and sink it in a
17-million-gallon tank specially
constructed for the purpose, you are going to get
a heck of a lot of production value for
your money. Especially if your name is
James Cameron.
More than that, at "Titanic's" two-hour
mark, when most films have sense
enough to be winding down, this behemoth
does stir to a kind of life. With
writer-director Cameron, a virtuoso at
large-scale action-adventure
extravaganzas serving as ringmaster, the
detailing of the ship's agonies
(compressed here from a real-life two hours
and 40 minutes to a bit more than an
hour) compels our interest absolutely.
But Cameron, there can be no doubt, is
after more than oohs and aahs. He's
already made "The Terminator" and
"Terminator 2"; with "Titanic" he has his eye
on "Doctor Zhivago" / "Lawrence of Arabia"
territory. But while his intentions are
clear, Cameron lacks the skills necessary
to pull off his coup. Just as the hubris of
headstrong shipbuilders who insisted that
the Titanic was unsinkable led to an
unparalleled maritime disaster, so
Cameron's overweening pride has come
unnecessarily close to capsizing this
project.
For seeing "Titanic" almost makes you weep
in frustration. Not because of the
excessive budget, not even because it
recalls the unnecessary loss of life in the
real 1912 catastrophe, which saw more than
1,500 of the 2,200-plus passengers
dying when an iceberg sliced the ship open
like a can opener. What really brings
on the tears is Cameron's insistence that
writing this kind of movie is within his
abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't even
close.
Cameron has regularly come up with his own
scripts in the past, but in a better
world someone would have had the nerve to
tell him or he would have realized
himself that creating a moving and
creditable love story is a different order of
business from coming up with wisecracks for
Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Instead, what audiences end up with
word-wise is a hackneyed, completely
derivative copy of old Hollywood romances,
a movie that reeks of phoniness and
lacks even minimal originality. Worse than
that, many of the characters,
especially the feckless tycoon Cal Hockley
(played by Billy Zane) and Kathy
Bates' impersonation of the Unsinkable
Molly Brown, are cliches of such purity
they ought to be exhibited in film schools
as examples of how not to write for the
screen.
It is easy to forget, as you wait for the
iceberg to arrive and shake things up, how
excellent an idea it was to revisit for
modern audiences the sinking of what was
the largest moving object ever built.
Numerous films have been made on the
subject, with even the Third Reich taking a
shot with a version that concluded,
not surprisingly, that the sinking was "an
eternal accusation against England's
greed." As Steven Biel wrote in "Down With
the Old Canoe," a fascinating
cultural history of public reaction to the
event, "The Titanic disaster begs for
resolution--and always resists it."
*
One reason this version is so long is a
modern framing story involving nautical
treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Cameron
veteran Bill Paxton), who is scouring the
Titanic's wreck (it was located in 1985)
for a fabulously expensive blue diamond
called "The Heart of the Ocean" that was
lost on board.
What Lovett turns up instead is a drawing
of a nude young woman wearing the
jewel. News of that find prompts a phone
call from 101-year-old Rose Dawson
Calvert (Gloria Stuart), who says it's her
in the drawing. Lovett flies Rose
(whom Cameron modeled on artist Beatrice
Wood) out to join his expedition. The
bulk of "Titanic" is her recollection of
what happened before, during and after that
great ship went down.
Young Rose (now played by Kate Winslet)
boarded the Titanic as a 17-year-old
wearing a very large hat and metaphorical
shackles. "To me it was a slave ship,"
she recalls, "taking me to America in
chains." In plainer English she was being
forced by her snooty mother Ruth DeWitt
Bukater into a (gasp!) loveless
marriage with Cal Hockley, an arrogant and
wealthy snob for whom the phrase
"perpetual sneer" was probably invented.
Rose may be a 17-year-old, but she knows a
thing or two. She makes offhanded
references to Freud, a wise gentleman no
one else on board has heard of, and
during an impromptu shopping spree she
managed to buy works by Picasso,
Degas and Monet despite Hockley's
dismissive belief that they "won't amount
to a thing." Clearly, this prodigy of taste
and discernment deserves better than
Mr. Perpetual Sneer, no matter how rich he
is.
Enter Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a
madcap artist and cherubic scamp
who wins his steerage ticket in a dockside
card game. Jack is staggered by a
glimpse of Rose, and though a conveniently
placed Irish lad advises him "you'd
as like have angels flying out of your arse
as get next to the likes of her," he's not
the kind of young man to give up easily.
Sure enough, despite the presence of 2,200
other passengers and crew, it's only
Jack who's around to save the day when a
distraught Rose considers suicide in a
flattering evening gown. Despite the best
efforts of mother Ruth (Frances
Fisher) and Hockley's snarling valet Spicer
Lovejoy (David Warner), Jack and
Rose are irresistibly drawn to each other.
She improves his manners (not hard to
do), he teaches her how to spit like a man,
and they spend quality time in
photogenic locations like the ship's
towering prow.
*
Both Winslet and DiCaprio are capable
actors (though his brash brat routine is
wearing thin) but they are victimized, as
is everyone else, by dialogue that has
the self-parodying ring of Young Romance
comics. "You could just call me a
tumbleweed blowing in the wind," Jack says,
adding later, "sooner or later the fire
I love about you is going to burn out."
Most weighted down by this kind of blather
are the fatuous Hockley, who has to say
things like "you filth" and Bates' Molly
Brown, a character so relentlessly folksy
she'd be at home on "The Beverly
Hillbillies."
Finally, after so much time has passed you
fear the iceberg has slept through its
wake-up call, disaster strikes the ship at
11:50 on the night of April 14. Cameron
is truly in his element here, and
"Titanic's" closing hour is jammed with the most
stirring and impressive sights, from
towering walls of water flooding a grand
dining room to the enormous ship itself
defying belief and going vertical in the
water.
These kinds of complex and demanding
sequences are handled with so much
aplomb it's understandable that the
director, who probably considers the script to
be the easiest part of his job, not only
wants to do it all but also thinks he can.
Yet as Cameron sails his lonely craft
toward greatness, he should realize he
needs to bring a passenger with him.
Preferably someone who can write.
------------------------------------------------
Here is James Cameron's infamous letter to the LA Times:
-------------------------------------
I have shrugged off Kenneth Turan's
incessant rain of personal barbs
over the last few months, since he
is clearly not a big enough man to
admit when he is wrong, and it has
been amusing to watch him dig
himself into a deeper hole each time he
tries to justify his misanthropic sensibility
with regard to "Titanic." But it's time to
speak up when Turan uses his bully
pulpit not only to attack my film, but the
entire film industry and its audiences.
Turan says that "the flip side of
'Titanic's' ability to draw hordes of viewers into
the theaters is the question of where these
viewers have been for the past
several years. In its unintentional
underlining of how narrow an audience net
most movies cast over the American public,
'Titanic' is not an example of
Hollywood's success, it's an emblem of its
failure." It shows, he says, "how
desperate the mainstream audience . . . has
become for anything even resembling
old-fashioned entertainment." They have, he
says, been "deadened by exposure
to nonstop trash."
Having gone on record condemning "Titanic"
as so bad "it almost makes you
weep in frustration," he is now desperate
to account for the phenomenon of its
unprecedented global critical and
commercial success. To do so, he has settled on
the outrageous conclusion that since
"Titanic" is garbage (because it has been
spoken and so it must be), then everything
else around it--every other film in
recent years--must be worse garbage. With
one sweeping statement he
condemns and dismisses the entire output of
Hollywood.
Turan has tipped his hand. We now see his
true heart. It's not that he doesn't
like some movies, as is a critic's
prerogative. It's that he doesn't like all movies.
Simmering in his own bile, year after year,
he has become further and further
removed from the simple joyful experience
of movie-watching, which, ironically,
probably attracted him to the job in the
first place. The best critics keep that joy
alive, while the worst let their cynicism
twist them beyond any recognizable
connection to the experience of a general
audience in a movie theater.
Turan sees himself as the high priest of
some arcane art form that is far too
refined for the average individual to
possibly appreciate. He writes as if the
insensitive masses must be constantly
corrected, like little children who do not
have the sense or experience to know what
is good for them without the critic's
patient instruction. This is paternalism
and elitism in its worst form, and utterly
insults the movie audience, which is
theoretically his constituency.
Turan says I write "lowest common
denominator screenplays that condescend to
their audience." The condescending one here
is Turan, who is insulting the
majority of the filmgoing public by telling
them that they shouldn't like what they
like.
"Titanic" is not a film that is sucking
people in with flashy hype and spitting them
out onto the street feeling let down and
ripped off. They are returning again and
again to repeat an experience that is
taking a 3-hour and 14-minute chunk out of
their lives, and dragging others with them,
so they can share the emotion.
Parents are taking their kids, adults are
taking their parents. People from 8 to 80
(literally) are connecting with this film.
After 14 weeks in release, "Titanic" is
still No. 1 in France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, Japan, Mexico, Australia, the U.K.
and almost every other country in which it
is playing. Audiences around the world
are celebrating their own essential
humanity by going into a dark room and crying
together.
The script for "Titanic" is earnest and
straightforward, wearing its heart on its
sleeve. It intentionally incorporates
universals of human experience and emotion
that are timeless--and familiar because
they reflect our basic emotional fabric.
By dealing in archetypes, the film touches
people in all cultures and of all ages. Is
this pandering? Or is it communicating?
Turan mistakes archetype for cliche. I
don't share his view that the best scripts
are only the ones that explore the
perimeter of human experience, or flashily
pirouette their witty and cynical
dialogue for our admiration.
He says that "Cameron is not someone to be
trusted anywhere near a word
processor" and calls the "Titanic"
screenplay "the worst script ever written,"
carrying on as if this is an accepted fact,
a "given" upon which all his further
arguments are then built. He conveniently
ignores the fact that the Writers Guild
of America voted "Titanic" one of the five
best original scripts of the year with its
nomination for best screenplay written
directly for the screen. There is no more
critical and discerning body in the world
when it comes to screenwriting. But in
Turan's private reality, the vast majority
of the worldwide audience and the
majority of Hollywood screenwriters are
wrong, and only he is right.
Turan's critical sensibility is the worst
kind of ego-driven elitism. The
illustration accompanying the article says
it all. One tiny figure trying vainly to
stop the juggernaut. But is that any sane
person's definition of the role of the
critic--to stand alone in complete
opposition to the tide of popular taste?
Poor Kenny. He sees himself as the lone
voice crying in the wilderness, righteous
but not heeded by the blind and dumb "great
unwashed" around him. It must be a
great burden to be cursed with such clear
vision when your misguided flock bray
past you, like lemmings, unmindful.
Turan has forgotten, if he ever knew, the
role of senior film critic for a large urban
newspaper. When people spend their
hard-earned money on a movie at the end
of a long work week, all they ask is that
their local critic steer them toward the
good ones and help them avoid the turkeys.
It's not too much to ask. And it's a
fairly simple job, once you grasp it. You
get to go to a movie first, before anyone
else, and then come back and tell everybody
about it. You even get to trash it if
you didn't like it. What you don't get to
do is grind on and on, month after month,
after the audience has rendered its verdict
in the most resounding of terms, telling
everybody why the filmgoers are wrong and
you are right.
Nobody's interested in the vitriolic
ravings of a bitter man who attacks and rips
apart movies that the great majority of
viewers find well worth their time and
money. Turan has lost touch with the joys
of film viewing as most people would
define it. He has lost touch, therefore,
with his readership, and no longer serves a
useful purpose.
When critics like Roger Ebert or Janet
Maslin talk about film, they demonstrate a
deep knowledge of and respect for their
subject, a respect for filmmakers
regardless of the specific blunders made on
a particular film, and a genuine
unwavering joy at the magic of cinema. Even
when they don't like something of
mine, I respect the source. They make me
want to try harder.
Give us a critic who actually likes movies.
Give us a critic who has at least some
slight understanding of the toil and
energy, the hopes and dreams that go into a
movie, any movie. Give us a critic who
shows respect for our chosen art, and
whom we can respect in turn. And give us
one who respects the paying audiences
who look to him or her for guidance, not
for lectures on how stupid they are for
liking what they like.
Forget about Clinton--how do we impeach
Kenneth Turan?
JIM CAMERON
Santa Monica
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------> Trent
ASchweitzer
On Wed, 01 Apr 1998 21:11:09 -0500, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
>the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
>rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
>
I could be misreading this but Mr. Cameron sounds
upset about something.
Andrys D Basten
In article <3522F3B9...@acs.bu.edu>, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
>the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
>rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
That was not the article Cameron wrote about. He was talking about Turan's
4th attack on Titanic and its "corrupted" audiences, which was published
about two days before the Oscars.
I posted that on this newsgroup.
- A
--
===========================================================
Andrys Basten <and...@netcom.com>
CNE, Basten Micro Consulting
San Francisco/East Bay - 510/235-3861
Have music, will travel: piano, harpsichord, recorders
http://www.andrys.com -Online resources
http://www.andrys.com/indox.html -Peru photos w/Canon Elph
Mark Penman
On Wed, 01 Apr 1998 21:11:09 -0500, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
> When critics like Roger Ebert . . . talk about film, they demonstrate
> a deep knowledge of and respect for their subject, a respect for
> filmmakers regardless of the specific blunders made on a particular
> film, and a genuine unwavering joy at the magic of cinema
And then they go off and write "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
with Russ Meyer. ; >
Let me state that I really appreciate James Cameron. He has
proven himself capable of delivering astounding thrill-a-minute
movies.
Did that sound like a slam? It shouldn't. It is a perfectly
laudable goal. Only a handful of action directors are on his
level when he's at his best. But high-octane thrills are
apparently not held in high esteem in Hollywood -- it's seen
as a stepping-stone to doing "important" and "moving"
work. That's a shame.
Look at the director's cut version of "Aliens" versus "The
Abyss". The first offered more relevant action scenes (e.g.,
those which explained why the critters didn't directly and
immediately attack the command center) and interesting
character-development bits that helped justify Ripley's
motivation re Newt. The second's additional "awe-inspiring"
footage helped slow the narrative to a crawl. That the studio
sliced out the rest, like the laugh-inducing frozen tidal-wave
footage, is to their credit.
Further, I feel that if the original theatrical release of "Abyss"
had ended with Ed Harris meeting a few alien-rescued
sub crewmen and informing the DeepCore survivors that he
was coming back with some new friends, it would have worked
much better than the provided *big* scene with the ships riding
on the ET vessel, which unfortunately looked sadly ridiculous.
But he wanted to do it, and had the budget to do it, so it
happened.
It just seems that Cameron works better with a ruthless editor
at his shoulder. But his later movies have proven wildly
popular, so that's much less likely to happen (hey, remember
that Stephen King used to write 250-page books!). Whatever.
I am glad that he has found enormous success. He's a great
innovative guy who does not in any fashion need any slack
from me, a lowly film geek.
I just won't be watching any more of his movies. Big freaking
deal. It is much sadder that the old Hong Kong is gone -- so
where will I get my fix?
Mark Penman
Website (Laissez Firearm): www.ipass.net/~mpenman
E-Mail: mpe...@ipass.net
Detlef Pelz
Seems that Turan doesn't express himself very well and leaves himself open
to some fairly trenchant criticism, while James "De Mille" Cameron
overstates the case somewhat. After all is said and done, would TITANIC
have received all the accolades without the wonderfully (and superbly)
depicted sinking of the doomed vessel? I think as a 90 -minute shipboard
romance, without the special effects of the second half, TITANIC (the
movie) would have sunk without a trace.
Mr. Turan, you've been bested; a graceful acknowledgment wouldn't go
astray.
Mr. Cameron, keep doing what you do, your best is yet to come.
Detlef Pelz
Melbourne, Australia
Markus Rausch
Hi Andrys
> That was not the article Cameron wrote about. He was talking about Turan's
> 4th attack on Titanic and its "corrupted" audiences, which was published
> about two days before the Oscars.
> I posted that on this newsgroup.
Could you post it again?
Markus
Terry Thome
On 2 Apr 1998 15:05:06 GMT, "Detlef Pelz" <dhp...@melbpc.org.au>
wrote:
I don't think the spectacular ship sinking sequence is what is keeping
the movie so popular, though. It's the romance angle that's keeping
the 14 year old girls coming back over and over and over. They're the
ones making this film so inexplicably popular.
Terry
Michael Brooke
Mark Penman <mpe...@ipass.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Apr 1998 21:11:09 -0500, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>
> > When critics like Roger Ebert . . . talk about film, they demonstrate
> > a deep knowledge of and respect for their subject, a respect for
> > filmmakers regardless of the specific blunders made on a particular
> > film, and a genuine unwavering joy at the magic of cinema
>
> And then they go off and write "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
> with Russ Meyer. ; >
And what's wrong with that? Personally, I'd far rather sit through that
particular film again (though I prefer the other Ebert collaboration
'Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens') than about 90% of the other
films I've seen. It may be crap, but at least it's witty, knowing crap
(compare and contrast with Troma films, which try to be witty, knowing
crap and unfortunately mostly end up just being crap).
>
> It just seems that Cameron works better with a ruthless editor
> at his shoulder.
This is true of a huge number of directors - but it's one of the
side-effects of fame and power. I still think Spielberg, John Carpenter
and Dario Argento were at their best in the Seventies, when they were
far less powerful, and I think that 'The Terminator' and 'Aliens' wipe
the floor with anything that Cameron has done since.
> But his later movies have proven wildly
> popular, so that's much less likely to happen (hey, remember
> that Stephen King used to write 250-page books!).
And has anyone noticed that there seems to be a definite correlation
between the length of the original Stephen King novel and the quality of
the film version?
Think about it - all the *good* King adaptations ('Carrie', 'Misery',
'Stand By Me' and 'The Shawshank Redemption' are the four I can think of
where there's no real argument about the quality) were based on either
shorter-than-average novels or novellas (though a King novella is longer
than many writers' novels!).
> I just won't be watching any more of his movies. Big freaking
> deal. It is much sadder that the old Hong Kong is gone -- so
> where will I get my fix?
Well, there's a *huge* Hong Kong backlog to work through - are you
seriously saying you've seen everything from an industry that at its
peak produced nearly two new films a day?
Michael
----------------------------------------------------------------
JAN SVANKMAJER - ALCHEMIST OF THE SURREAL
http://www.illumin.co.uk/svank
a lavish tribute to the cinema's wildest imagination
----------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Brooke
Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
> Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
> the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
> rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
>
I'm sure I would have enjoyed it, had you bothered to format it
properly...
Trent
Michael Brooke wrote:
> Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>
> > Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
> > the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
> > rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
> >
>
> I'm sure I would have enjoyed it, had you bothered to format it
> properly...
>
> Michael
Sorry about that. It looked formatted when I sent it....
The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks, but
he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
----> Trent
r...@adelphia.net
>Mark Penman <mpe...@ipass.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 01 Apr 1998 21:11:09 -0500, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > When critics like Roger Ebert . . . talk about film, they demonstrate
>> > a deep knowledge of and respect for their subject, a respect for
>> > filmmakers regardless of the specific blunders made on a particular
>> > film, and a genuine unwavering joy at the magic of cinema
>>
>> And then they go off and write "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
>> with Russ Meyer. ; >
>
>And what's wrong with that? Personally, I'd far rather sit through that
>particular film again (though I prefer the other Ebert collaboration
>'Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens') than about 90% of the other
>films I've seen. It may be crap, but at least it's witty, knowing crap
>(compare and contrast with Troma films, which try to be witty, knowing
>crap and unfortunately mostly end up just being crap).
>
agreed.....
i enjoyed watching Beyond more than just about any movie i can think
of...... (ok maybe thats an overstatement :) but it is a fun movie....
never seen a troma film i could sit thru..... (they did release Killer
Condom this year... but they only BOUGHT that.... so technically...)
Lewis E Wolfgang
I beg to differ. I'm 52 years old, male, and don't like to go to the movies.
Indeed, the last film I saw in a theater was "Deliverance". I saw Titanic
twice, and while there were young girls present, they weren't in the
majority. While I brought my 12 year old daughter with me, it was my
idea to see it again.
Titanic has resonated with a large percentage of the population for
reasons that wouldn't be understood by those not smitten. I'm not
criticizing those who don't understand, is just that either you have it
or you don't.
Further, I think the movie's popularity hits on different levels with
different
people. Certainly Leo figures in with some, the special effects with others.
But there is something else about The Titanic that transcends even the movie.
For myself, I've always been close to the sea. Seven years in the Navy,
followed by many years work at an oceanographic research lab, and living
on various small craft in San Diego Bay have left their marks on my psyche.
One of the movie's high points for me are the scenes on the bow, standing
there with arms outstretched. I'VE BEEN THERE! (on other ships) You
truly are "King of the World". I also have a deep appreciation for history,
and perform volunteer work for the San Diego Railroad Museum. Similarly,
I have difficulty explaining to many folks why I dedicate so much time to
the interpretation and preservation of rusty old trains.
Either you have it, or you don't.
Regards,
Lew Wolfgang
r...@adelphia.net
On Fri, 03 Apr 1998 18:39:31 GMT, car...@swbell.net (ASchweitzer)
wrote:
>On 3 Apr 1998 13:54:21 GMT, "Doug Sinclair" <do...@expresslane.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>> >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
>>but
>>> >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
>>> >
>>> >----> Trent
>>> >
>>> So?
>>
>> So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
>>done before is an idiot. That's a horrible attitude, forcing people into
>>narrow, typecast niches.
>
>Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
>a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
>won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
>he want?
i thought cameron was a bit embarrassing on oscar night...
but what "i want" is for some of the hack grudge meisters that have
populated way too many big city papers and news weeklies to go away
and die....
but lets at least have them publicly humiliated like this
beforehand...... :)
cameron wasn't exactly harlan ellison at his dressing down best.....
but he was frothing enough at the mouth to make up for it in......
i'm just glad no one cooled him off or stopped him sending it :)
i've seen so much childish shit go on its more than i can bear.......
who was it that said life is just junior high?
well if the critics we have working are any indication.....
junior high is a bit too advanced...... try kindergarten.....
(and i'm not even talking pauline kaels various crimes of passion and
omission. here.......)
ASchweitzer
On Thu, 02 Apr 1998 19:41:38 -0500, Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>Michael Brooke wrote:
>
>> Trent <tlu...@acs.bu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > Here is Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic. I copied this straight from
>> > the LA Times website (www.latimes.com), along with Cameron's recent
>> > rebuttle letter. Enjoy.....
>> >
>>
>> I'm sure I would have enjoyed it, had you bothered to format it
>> properly...
>>
>> Michael
>
>Sorry about that. It looked formatted when I sent it....
>
Andrys D Basten
In article <35239241...@watchtower.studfb.unibw-muenchen.de>,
Sure, here it is:
==================================
[If replying to this, pls reference "Turan" and not me...]
Subject: Re: Turan's Cameron column 3/21/98
Here's a copy of the full Kenneth Turan column that Cameron
provoked Cameron's letter. Turan mentions the 'corrupted' audience.
=======From L.A. Times=======
Los Angeles Times
Saturday, March 21, 1998
Oscars '98
Make No Mistake about it, 'Titanic's' record-breaking
success means bon voyage to the notion that a literate
script is crucial to the filmmaking process. A commentary
by Times film critic Kenneth Turan.
Memo to the incensed gentleman who called a Times editor after
the Golden Globe Awards were announced to express the hope
that "now that 'Titanic' is the best film of the year, you'll take
that guy who didn't like it outside and shoot him." For better or
worse, I'm still here.
Yet even allowing for serious overestimation of the Golden
Globes' importance, there can be no doubt that events are moving
the caller's way. "Titanic" earned a raft of nominations from the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and at this juncture
has to be considered the favorite for the best picture Oscar.
But all this doesn't translate into personal chagrin at
having turned in a perhaps less than enthusiastic review of the
film, even though a reader from Bigfork, Mont., took the time to
write and say that if I had any doubts about "Titanic's"
greatness, "your proof is in the box office."
Film critics, general opinion notwithstanding, are not
intended to be applause meters. Just as restaurant critics don't
send couples seeking that special anniversary meal straight to
McDonald's on the "everybody goes there, it must be the best"
theory, the overall mandate of critics must be to point out the
existence and importance of other criteria for judgment besides
popularity.
Yet as "Titanic" has turned itself into the top box-office
attraction of all time, the first film to grasp the once
unapproachable grail of the $1 billion worldwide gross (though
ticket price inflation is a factor), there can be no doubt that
its success is a genuine sensation, one whose far-reaching
consequences are fascinating to examine for quite specific
reasons.
In a mass audience business by and large run by people with
no instinctive sense of what a mass audience truly wants, all
kinds of powerful people will be taking a variety of lessons from
this unprecedented outpouring of money and support. What does the
phenomenon of what one executive called "the best film ever made
from the worst script ever written" mean for the future of
Hollywood?
While the lackluster nature of "Titanic's" script is key to
any discussion, the intention here is not to beat a dead horse.
Rather it's to point out that the success of the James Cameron
film with both the academy and the public is unmistakably a
watershed event. It will likely solidify trends already apparent
in Hollywood and lead, unless we're lucky, to changes in the kinds
of movies we'll be seeing in the future, changes that all
audiences will notice and not necessarily applaud.
Though no one, not even its staunchest partisans, predicted
the kind of success for "Titanic" that it ended up achieving, the
reasons for this bonanza are not difficult to discover, though
some of the key factors involved are not the ones usually cited.
For one thing, certain films succeed in part because the
makers have been canny enough to recognize an audience
predisposition to embrace particular subject matter. That was what
happened with the first "Batman" and, as filmmaker James Cameron
has himself noted when he talked about receiving and passing on
this story like a baton, that was the case here.
From the moment it went down until today, the Titanic has
never gone through a period in which the public was not fascinated
by it to one degree or another. "Down With the Old Canoe," Steven
Biel's incisive cultural history of that phenomenon, notes that
more than 100 popular songs were published in the year following
the ship's sinking. More recently, "A Night to Remember," Walter
Lord's nonfiction book (basis of the 1958 film), has gone through
an impressive 71 printings and captivated readers of that
generation as fully as the film does today's viewers.
And while Cameron's version is attracting paying customers in
unprecedented numbers, that success paradoxically says at least as
much about how poor a job Hollywood in general is doing in
reaching the mass audience that should be its bread and butter as
it does about the filmmaking skill of its creators.
The flip side of "Titanic's" ability to draw hordes of
viewers into theaters is the question of where these viewers have
been for the past several years. In its unintentional underlining
of how narrow an audience net most movies cast, "Titanic" is not
an example of Hollywood's success, it's an emblem of its failure.
For "Titanic's" ability to attract a crowd also shows how
desperate the mainstream audience--alienated by studio reliance on
the kind of mindless violence that can be counted on to sell
overseas--has become for anything even resembling old-fashioned
entertainment. As Cameron himself said in a recent interview, "We
thought there was a hunger for emotion, for character, for drama."
Deadened by exposure to nonstop trash and willing to confuse the
on-screen chemistry of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet with
writing ability, audiences have been sadly eager to embrace a film
that, putting the best face on it, is a witless counterfeit of
Hollywood's Golden Age, a compendium of cliches that add up to a
reasonable facsimile of a film. "It's close enough" is how one
Oscar-winning screenwriter accounted for the film's success. "If
you give today's audiences just an idea of what the film is about,
they'll go for it."
What, then, does that audience appetite portend for the
future of studio films? One conclusion at least is inescapable:
Despite the pious promises of self-deluded studio executives who
insist that this film is not going to be the forerunner of a raft
of $200-million ventures, that's exactly what we're in for.
Because human nature in the Hollywood habitat being what it
is, ego-driven directors will feel it's an insult to their
greatness to be denied what another director received. Just as
most top filmmakers now insist that holding a film to a plebian
two-hour length is out of the question for creators of their
vision, so they will insist that they too are worthy of
Cameron-sized budgets.
And in a day and age when most studio executives act like
guilty parents too timid and conflicted to discipline their
wayward children, there's no force strong enough to stand in the
way of rampant ego on the march. If a fiasco like 1980's "Heaven's
Gate" didn't ultimately curtail studio spending despite promises
to the contrary, does anyone seriously think a success like
"Titanic" is going to keep the lid on?
The problem with that megabudget scenario is twofold. For
one, though Cameron is not someone to be trusted anywhere near a
word processor, he is a master of the physical side of filmmaking
and one of the few people who can make effective use of $200
million. What will happen when Cameron wannabes with considerable
studio clout start turning out grotesquely bloated, "Postman"-type
disasters on a regular basis is not a pleasant scenario to
contemplate.
The other difficulty is that what Cameron does
naturally--write lowest common denominator screenplays that
condescend to their audience--other writers have to be forced
into. The more a movie costs, the bigger its audience tent has to
be, the more it has to appeal to every person on the planet if
it's to have a hope of breaking even. So these movies ruthlessly
bludgeon writers into dumbing down their scripts, removing any
trace of intelligence that might put off even a single potential
viewer.
Potentially more troublesome and destructive than any of this
is what the embracing of "Titanic" by the public and the motion
picture community says about the future of studio filmmaking as a
whole. For make no mistake about it, what we're witnessing is the
wholesale jettisoning of the notion of anything resembling a
literate script as a necessary part of the filmmaking process, a
change in the very nature of film that is not going to be any less
fatal for being largely unrecognized.
Never in the past has a film with a script as lacking as
"Titanic's" been so universally (well, almost universally)
acclaimed as the acme of the medium. Think of any celebrated
venture from the past, whether it's "All About Eve" (which shares
"Titanic's" Oscar record of 14 nominations), "The Godfather,"
"Lawrence of Arabia," "E.T.," even the genuinely clever "Star
Wars" or "Jaws" with its marvelous Robert Shaw shark attack
monologue. Audience pictures all, and all of them had strong
scripts at their core. They were written to be classics, not
slavishly and ineptly copied from them.
But "Titanic's" success means that from now on all bets are
off. Today's audiences, with their taste corrupted and denatured
by 'round the clock exposure to bad TV and worse features, now
have difficulty discerning a slick and derivative fake from the
real thing. And if audiences can't tell the difference, you can be
sure that studios are going to start thinking that time and effort
put into memorable writing is a waste.
Because if there is a hidden cause to what's surreptitiously
happening all around us, it's the enormous advances made recently
in computer-generated visual effects. As "Jurassic Park," "The
Lost World" and "Independence Day" proved with a vengeance,
audiences tend not to notice feeble writing if they get their
money's worth of astonishing sights.
In "Titanic," that trend has reached its point of no return:
Terminally distracted by some truly spectacular physical effects,
both audiences and the academy have stampeded toward spectacle and
decided that, especially with a pair of attractive actors thrown
into the mix, language is a nonessential that can easily be
dispensed with. If that is in fact the wave of the future, few of
even "Titanic's" fans are going to be happy about where it comes
ashore.
Exasperated by my unyielding stance toward "Titanic," a
friend recently informed me that I "care too much about words." To
that charge I'm forced to plead guilty. My fear, however, is not
standing alone; it's that by the time more people wish they'd
stood on the dock with me, it will be too late to make any
difference.
=======
Doug Sinclair
> >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
but
> >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
> >
> >----> Trent
> >
> So?
So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
Terry Thome
I guess I'm too jaded. I thought the fictional love story was pretty
limp and, although the last hour or so is phenominal in it's
supposedly historically recreation of the sinking, it was too much of
a special effects porn flick. Is a memorable plot too much to ask????
ASchweitzer
>> >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
Michael Brooke
Doug Sinclair <do...@expresslane.ca> wrote:
> > >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
> but
> > >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
> > >
> > >----> Trent
> > >
> > So?
>
> So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
> done before is an idiot. That's a horrible attitude, forcing people into
> narrow, typecast niches.
>
'Titanic' is hardly new, either in terms of subject matter (the story
has been told several times before, at least once to rather more
impressive effect - 'A Night to Remember') or in terms of Cameron's
output - 'The Abyss' has several points in common.
And when I think of radical, groundbreaking cinema, 'Titanic' is *not*
the first film that springs to mind. In fact, what most depressed me
about it is how conservative it was on almost every level. I can
certainly appreciate the amount of effort that was put in - but that
hardly makes for a particularly satisfying film.
ASchweitzer
>Doug Sinclair <do...@expresslane.ca> wrote:
>
>> > >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
>> but
>> > >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
>> > >
>> > >----> Trent
>> > >
>> > So?
>>
>> So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
>> done before is an idiot. That's a horrible attitude, forcing people into
>> narrow, typecast niches.
>>
>
>'Titanic' is hardly new, either in terms of subject matter (the story
>has been told several times before, at least once to rather more
>impressive effect - 'A Night to Remember') or in terms of Cameron's
>output - 'The Abyss' has several points in common.
<snip>
I just never could get that Kate W. was Frances F's
daughter.
Maria S. Castellanos
On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
> On 3 Apr 1998 13:54:21 GMT, "Doug Sinclair" <do...@expresslane.ca>
> wrote:
>
> >> >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
> >but
> >> >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
> >> >
> >> >----> Trent
> >> >
> >> So?
> >
> > So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
> >done before is an idiot. That's a horrible attitude, forcing people into
> >narrow, typecast niches.
>
> Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
> a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
> won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
> he want?
Well, sure, Turan can give his opinion. But he sounds like an idiot. What
kind of film reviewer/critic bitches about a director for trying to do
something no one has ever done before?
He can give his opinion all he wants. It just means I'm not going to
listen to him. The guy has attitude.
(And, by the way, I'm not one of those people who think TITANIC is the
greatest film ever, or even of the year. However, I hate obnoxious
reviewers.)
--------------------
Maria S. Castellanos
Five-College Minority Dissertation Fellow
Mount Holyoke College
Detlef Pelz
You might be right there, although I don't think the romance as a
standalone picture would have done such dramatic business.
I don't necessarily equate popularity with "great", or even "good";
however, I think TITANIC was good, but that A NIGHT TO REMEMBER was better
and had a greater dramatic impact on this viewer.
Given a shot at editing the movie I would have brought it in at a bit over
two hours, but in terms of bums on seats and peer kudos none of this seems
to matter, does it?
Detlef Pelz,
Melbourne, Australia
> I don't think the spectacular ship sinking sequence is what is keeping
> the movie so popular, though. It's the romance angle that's keeping
> the 14 year old girls coming back over and over and over. They're the
> ones making this film so inexplicably popular.
>
> Terry
>
Daniel R. Baker
Maria S. Castellanos wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
> (snip)
> >
> > Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
> > a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
> > won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
> > he want?
Look, I haven't read Turan's review or Cameron's reply. I'm not going to say who
was right.
But what is with this double standard here? Turan tears into Cameron in print,
and Schweitzer says he's entitled to his opinion. Cameron tears into Turan in
print, and Schweitzer says he's a big baby.
It sounds to me like Cameron's detractors are most upset because he gave a critic
a taste of his own medicine.
Respectfully,
Daniel R. Baker.
(Disclaimers ad nauseam).
Patrick Dolan
Michael Brooke wrote in message
<1d73548.6w...@everyman.demon.co.uk>...
>Maria S. Castellanos <mcas...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
>>
>
>> >
>> > Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
>> > a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
>> > won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
>> > he want?
>>
>> Well, sure, Turan can give his opinion. But he sounds like an idiot. What
>> kind of film reviewer/critic bitches about a director for trying to do
>> something no one has ever done before?
>
>What *is* all this "something no one has ever done before"?
>
>You're far from the first person to claim this, so this isn't an attack
>on you personally, but just what is so new and groundbreaking about
>'Titanic'?
>
>The story has been told umpteen times before ('A Night to Remember' did
>a rather better job in narrative terms, and David Warner was appearing
>in his *second* Titanic film!), I couldn't spot a single special effect
>that hadn't been done before (and I was surprisingly unimpressed with
>some of the CGI work), and even Cameron has tackled this type of
>material before with 'The Abyss'!
>
>I repeat: apart from the grotesque budget, can you name one single
>element of 'Titanic' that is genuinely original and unprecedented?
>
I'm not sure, but I think the reviewer was implying that Camereon shouldn't
have attempted a "love story", mainly because he hadn't done any previously.
donnac
"Patrick Dolan" <patd...@cris.com> writes:
>Michael Brooke wrote in message
><1d73548.6w...@everyman.demon.co.uk>...
>>Maria S. Castellanos <mcas...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
>>
>>What *is* all this "something no one has ever done before"?
>>
>>You're far from the first person to claim this, so this isn't an attack
>>on you personally, but just what is so new and groundbreaking about
snips
>>
>>I repeat: apart from the grotesque budget, can you name one single
>>element of 'Titanic' that is genuinely original and unprecedented?
>>
>I'm not sure, but I think the reviewer was implying that Camereon shouldn't
>have attempted a "love story", mainly because he hadn't done any previously.
Terminator *is* a love story.
The Abyss's best moments are in its love story.
T2 can't make its mother/son love story more than a bitter, cynical
mockery, which is interesting in its own right (wondering if the T
would make a good father becase he'll "never leave" John, when her
behavior has kept him in foster homes for years--ha! wow!)
True Lies is so hateful a "love" story it makes me cringe.
only my opinion,
dsc
r...@adelphia.net
>Maria S. Castellanos <mcas...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
>>
>
>The story has been told umpteen times before ('A Night to Remember' did
>a rather better job in narrative terms, and David Warner was appearing
>in his *second* Titanic film!), I couldn't spot a single special effect
heh... so was bernard fox :)
he was the guy who yelled "iceberg ahead" in the baker movie. :)
weird.......
i love bernard fox.... can't wait to see the hour or so of his stuff
that was cut out but will appear in the directors cut....
man i was shocked when i saw him..... i thought he died in the early
80's...... yellowbeard was the last i remember him..... :)
Michael Brooke
Maria S. Castellanos <mcas...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
>
> >
> > Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
> > a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
> > won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
> > he want?
>
> Well, sure, Turan can give his opinion. But he sounds like an idiot. What
> kind of film reviewer/critic bitches about a director for trying to do
> something no one has ever done before?
What *is* all this "something no one has ever done before"?
You're far from the first person to claim this, so this isn't an attack
on you personally, but just what is so new and groundbreaking about
'Titanic'?
The story has been told umpteen times before ('A Night to Remember' did
a rather better job in narrative terms, and David Warner was appearing
in his *second* Titanic film!), I couldn't spot a single special effect
that hadn't been done before (and I was surprisingly unimpressed with
some of the CGI work), and even Cameron has tackled this type of
material before with 'The Abyss'!
I repeat: apart from the grotesque budget, can you name one single
element of 'Titanic' that is genuinely original and unprecedented?
Michael
Doug Sinclair
> >I'm not sure, but I think the reviewer was implying that Camereon
shouldn't
> >have attempted a "love story", mainly because he hadn't done any
previously.
Actually, I'm pretty sure he was implying that Cameron shouldn't have
attempted a *period* love story. Cameron's done love stories before, but
they were always modern sci-fi ones.
niky
Michael Brooke wrote:
>
> Maria S. Castellanos <mcas...@mtholyoke.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, ASchweitzer wrote:
> >
>
> > >
> > > Since when can't Turan give his opinion? God, Cameron sounds like such
> > > a big baby going on and on and on. People are going to his movie, he
> > > won the Oscar and got to act like God for the evening, what else does
> > > he want?
> >
> > Well, sure, Turan can give his opinion. But he sounds like an idiot. What
> > kind of film reviewer/critic bitches about a director for trying to do
> > something no one has ever done before?
>
> What *is* all this "something no one has ever done before"?
>
> You're far from the first person to claim this, so this isn't an attack
> on you personally, but just what is so new and groundbreaking about
> 'Titanic'?
>
> The story has been told umpteen times before ('A Night to Remember' did
> a rather better job in narrative terms, and David Warner was appearing
> in his *second* Titanic film!), I couldn't spot a single special effect
> that hadn't been done before (and I was surprisingly unimpressed with
> some of the CGI work), and even Cameron has tackled this type of
> material before with 'The Abyss'!
>
> I repeat: apart from the grotesque budget, can you name one single
> element of 'Titanic' that is genuinely original and unprecedented?
>
> Michael
how about the underwater shots of the real titanic. most of those have
never been seen before. no one has even gone that far into the ship
before. then we've got the spcial effects. they may not be original,
but perfectly executed. water is the hardest to computer generate
because they use a formula for CGGs and water is random and can't be
done with a formula. consider that. as to your being 'unimpressed',
even the critics that HATED the movie said that the special fx were
incredible and unprecedented.
just my $0.02 -- niky
dgri...@theriver.com
I saw it for the 5th time last Friday night -- and for me, it is
starting to wear a bit. I was able to spend more time engrossed in
observing the special effects, and visibly noticed how much of the movie
WAS spent on Jack and Rose, vs the actual historical account of the
sinking. Nothing wrong with that, as it still held my attention..
dg
On Fri, 03 Apr 1998 18:39:31 GMT, ASchweitzer wrote:
>On 3 Apr 1998 13:54:21 GMT, "Doug Sinclair" <do...@expresslane.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>> >The biggest problem I have with Turan isn't that he says Titanic sucks,
>>but
>>> >he basically says Cameron is an idiot for even trying to make the film.
>>> >
>>> >----> Trent
>>> >
>>> So?
>>
>> So Turan is implying that anyone who tries to do something they've never
>>done before is an idiot. That's a horrible attitude, forcing people into
>>narrow, typecast niches.
>
niky
mic...@pop3.demon.co.uk wrote:
> > how about the underwater shots of the real titanic. most of those have
> > never been seen before. no one has even gone that far into the ship
> > before. then we've got the spcial effects. they may not be original,
> > but perfectly executed.
>
> "Perfectly" is very much a matter of opinion - I was surprisingly
> unimpressed by many of the special effects, particularly the long shots
> of the ship with all too obviously computer generated passengers. Not
> to mention the now notorious shot of the stuntwoman with Kate Winslet's
> face imperfectly mapped over her own (there are loads of other examples
> too, but I won't go into them).
what scene is that in? (the face thing, i mean.) actually, to tell you
the truth, i was not paying THAT much attention to the sfx. i prefer to
watch the story. but hey, people go for different reasons. (good
point, though, that perfection is a matter of perspective. i'm pretty
sure that a regular person (me) isn't going to notice as many flaws as a
movie maker.)
niky
~~(almost) everything is a matter of oppinion~~
mic...@pop3.demon.co.uk
niky <ioi...@mail.superlink.net> wrote:
> Michael Brooke wrote:
> >
> >
> > I repeat: apart from the grotesque budget, can you name one single
> > element of 'Titanic' that is genuinely original and unprecedented?
> >
> > Michael
>
> how about the underwater shots of the real titanic. most of those have
> never been seen before. no one has even gone that far into the ship
> before. then we've got the spcial effects. they may not be original,
> but perfectly executed.
"Perfectly" is very much a matter of opinion - I was surprisingly
unimpressed by many of the special effects, particularly the long shots
of the ship with all too obviously computer generated passengers. Not
to mention the now notorious shot of the stuntwoman with Kate Winslet's
face imperfectly mapped over her own (there are loads of other examples
too, but I won't go into them).
Not that I have any great problem with technical flaws - I've championed
'King Kong' over 'Jurassic Park' on numerous occasions - but when I see
people (and you're far from the only one) using words like "perfection",
I seriously begin to wonder if we saw the same film!
> water is the hardest to computer generate
> because they use a formula for CGGs and water is random and can't be
> done with a formula. consider that.
So why use computers at all? There are plenty of other SFX techniques
that could have done a more convincing job. Cameron is rather too much
in love with CGI - though, to give him credit, this is the first time
I've been disappointed with the effects in one of his films.
Michael
Angel_Lady
On Wed, 8 Apr 1998 21:37:18 EDT, niky <ioi...@mail.superlink.net>
wrote:
i'm pretty
>sure that a regular person (me) isn't going to notice as many flaws as a
>movie maker.)
>
>niky
>
>~~(almost) everything is a matter of oppinion~~
I agree. My father is a magician and he always wanted me to learn so
that I could sell it in the family store. I refused....for the same
reason that I don't want to know all the answers, and spot all the
flaws.....I'd rather see the world through my "ignorant-colored"
glasses than to try to point out all the flaws and answers....life's
much more fun that way isn't it?
Angel
Michael Brooke
niky <ioi...@mail.superlink.net> wrote:
> mic...@pop3.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
> > > how about the underwater shots of the real titanic. most of those have
> > > never been seen before. no one has even gone that far into the ship
> > > before. then we've got the spcial effects. they may not be original,
> > > but perfectly executed.
> >
> > "Perfectly" is very much a matter of opinion - I was surprisingly
> > unimpressed by many of the special effects, particularly the long shots
> > of the ship with all too obviously computer generated passengers. Not
> > to mention the now notorious shot of the stuntwoman with Kate Winslet's
> > face imperfectly mapped over her own (there are loads of other examples
> > too, but I won't go into them).
>
> what scene is that in? (the face thing, i mean.) actually, to tell you
> the truth, i was not paying THAT much attention to the sfx. i prefer to
> watch the story. but hey, people go for different reasons. (good
> point, though, that perfection is a matter of perspective. i'm pretty
> sure that a regular person (me) isn't going to notice as many flaws as a
> movie maker.)
Well, my girlfriend (who normally *never* notices these things) nudged
my arm at a particularly obviously CGI-generated moment - then again,
she'd also been conditioned by the hype and the more wide-eyed 'Titanic'
fans to expect flawlessness.
But this whole argument started because someone erroneously used the
word "perfect" - as I said, I couldn't care less how ropy the special
effects are if the actual film is worthwhile. But I thought it was
interesting that for all the gargantuan budget and advance build-up,
there were just as many flaws in 'Titanic's effects as there were in
many films of far lesser ambition.
Oh, and the "face" shot is in one of those scenes where Kate Winslet is
running down the corridor (or possibly up) being chased by several
million gallons of water.
Michael
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: "Doug Sinclair" <do...@expresslane.ca>
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
Date: 7 Apr 1998 12:22:12 GMT:
If you reread the original post you might notice the the poster stated "what
has no one done before". NO ONE. I love Titanic, but I agree with the
followedup poster. Nothing in Titanic was that groundbreaking that has not
been shown before. The special effects were quite good and supported the movie
just fine, but they were not that spectacular or brand new thechnics.
---
best regards
Gerhard Gruber
email: spar...@eunet.at
g.gr...@sis.co.at
FIDO: 2:310/81.11
Spelling corrections are appreciated.
Harrison's postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
"But this script can't sink!"
"She is made of irony, sir. I assure you, she can. And she will."
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: niky <ioi...@mail.superlink.net>
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
>how about the underwater shots of the real titanic. most of those have
>never been seen before. no one has even gone that far into the ship
>before. then we've got the spcial effects. they may not be original,
>but perfectly executed. water is the hardest to computer generate
>because they use a formula for CGGs and water is random and can't be
>done with a formula. consider that. as to your being 'unimpressed',
>even the critics that HATED the movie said that the special fx were
>incredible and unprecedented.
Which waterscenes were computergenerated? Apart form the flying over Titanic
scenes, of course. Some of them were pretty obvious to me. That just reminds
me what a friend told me about this movie. The only thing, that really was new
and had never been done before were, that the flying scens included also the
animation of people and their movement. You can see this i.e. in the shot were
Jack cried "I'm the king..." and the camera flies over the Titanic , shows a
picture of the Capitain standing at the railing and Murdoch comes out to him.
The movements of Murduch are quite obviously computergenerated, but
nevertheless, they look quite good.
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: mic...@pop3.demon.co.uk
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
>of the ship with all too obviously computer generated passengers. Not
>to mention the now notorious shot of the stuntwoman with Kate Winslet's
>face imperfectly mapped over her own (there are loads of other examples
Which one was that?
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: mic...@everyman.demon.co.uk (Michael Brooke)
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
>Oh, and the "face" shot is in one of those scenes where Kate Winslet is
>running down the corridor (or possibly up) being chased by several
>million gallons of water.
Are you sure??? I read some interviews where they talked about problems at the
shooting and this gave me the impression that this scenes were done by Kate
herself. Well I may be about anive about this, though. :)
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: <dgri...@theriver.com>
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
>I saw it for the 5th time last Friday night -- and for me, it is
>starting to wear a bit. I was able to spend more time engrossed in
>observing the special effects, and visibly noticed how much of the movie
>WAS spent on Jack and Rose, vs the actual historical account of the
>sinking. Nothing wrong with that, as it still held my attention..
It's exactly the other way around with me. :) When I watched it the fourth
time I constantly paid attention to the sfx and backgrounds instead to the
story. The fifth time I ignored these things and tried to let the story get
me. It worked. It was as good as the second time. :) The first time was the
best of all, but I doubt that I will experience this again.
Pentti J Lajunen
tt...@sgi.net (Terry Thome) writes:
> I don't think the spectacular ship sinking sequence is what is keeping
> the movie so popular, though. It's the romance angle that's keeping
> the 14 year old girls coming back over and over and over. They're the
> ones making this film so inexplicably popular.
I think its because of both. Titanic was the first
movie to combine huge special effects and action
imagery with a chick romance flick. Many chicks who haven't
seen this, actually very standard and ordinary imagery before,
were blown away. Its the ship, chicks dig the ship (and that's
why Superman works alone). And size DOES matter.
Doug Sinclair
> If you reread the original post you might notice the the poster stated
"what
> has no one done before". NO ONE.
Yeah, but the original poster missed Turan's point as well. The original
ORIGINAL poster was quoting Kenneth Turan's review of Titanic, and Turan
wasn't claiming that nothing like Titanic had been done before. He was
claiming that Cameron hadn't done a script like it before (ie. a period
love story). As much as it pains me to repeat it, here's the original
quote:
"What really brings on the tears is Cameron's insistence that writing
this kind of movie is within his abilities. Not only isn't it, it isn't
even close."
He's wrong, but that's what he said. :)
>I love Titanic, but I agree with the
> followedup poster. Nothing in Titanic was that groundbreaking that has
not
> been shown before. The special effects were quite good and supported the
movie
> just fine, but they were not that spectacular or brand new thechnics.
I never implied that, and neither did Turan. :)
However, I would argue your claim anyway. I think there were quite a few
techniques used in the effects for Titanic that have never been done
before. And one thing's for sure: the sinking of the Titanic has never
before been portrayed in such detail, and so accurately. Nobody's seen it
like that before.
Michael Brooke
Gerhard Gruber <spar...@eunet.at> wrote:
> Destination: mic...@everyman.demon.co.uk (Michael Brooke)
> From: Gruber Gerhard
> Group: alt.movies.titanic
> Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 09:25:34 +0100:
>
> >Oh, and the "face" shot is in one of those scenes where Kate Winslet is
> >running down the corridor (or possibly up) being chased by several
> >million gallons of water.
>
> Are you sure??? I read some interviews where they talked about problems at the
> shooting and this gave me the impression that this scenes were done by Kate
> herself. Well I may be about anive about this, though. :)
Put it like this, if it *was* her real face, then something extremely
weird is happening to it! Maybe this was shot on the day after the
notorious spiked lobster chowder incident?
Michael Butler
Titanic ISN'T a chick flick. I'm not a 'chick' and I've seen it four times.
Every time I go there are an equal number of both sex's. Also, a huge
majority of the audience are adults. Why do so many people put the success
down to 14 year old girls?! It's not true. There simply aren't enough 14
year olds in the world to give the film so much success (no matter how many
times they see it).
PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old 'chicks'
didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
Mike
Rev Chuck
The same can be said about _The Sting_.
Avoid normal situations.
Michael Brooke (mic...@everyman.demon.co.uk) wrote:
[..]
: and David Warner was appearing
: in his *second* Titanic film!
Third, if you count _Time Bandits_.
--
The Stainless Steel Moviegoer
"There's a hatred of art, a hatred of literature -- I mean of the genuine
kind. Oh the shams -- *those* they'll swallow by the bucket!"
-- Henry James, _The Author of Beltraffio_
wg...@runtel.fr
In article <nf7pviqei...@trumpetti.hut.fi>,
Nothing else
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
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rgr...@ionline.net
Witold Tietze
Michael Butler wrote:
>
> PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old 'chicks'
> didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
Really? I thought that's how the Academy Board worked.
Stigs
Well said!!!!! But you will never make people understand it. Too many of
them refuse to "let Titanic in" just like Brock Lovett in the movie! PS I've
seen it 8 times and would see it again in a minute!
Michael Butler wrote in message <6gl1j6$ja6$1...@biffo.sol.co.uk>...
Titanic ISN'T a chick flick. I'm not a 'chick' and I've seen it four times.
Every time I go there are an equal number of both sex's. Also, a huge
majority of the audience are adults. Why do so many people put the success
down to 14 year old girls?! It's not true. There simply aren't enough 14
year olds in the world to give the film so much success (no matter how many
times they see it).
PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old 'chicks'
didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
Mike
Ralph Jones
Stigs wrote:
> [snip]
> PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old 'chicks'
> didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
No...forty-year-old movie workers who had just seen several hundred million
dollars pumped into their industry gave it 11 Oscars. And even they wouldn't
give it one for acting. rj
Michael Brooke
Ralph Jones <rnj...@teal.csn.net> wrote:
Or writing. In fact, 'Titanic' is the first film in cinema history to
win more than seven Oscars without a single one for acting or the script
- which is an ominous portent for the future of Hollywood.
Andrys D Basten
In article <3538FB70...@teal.csn.net>,
Ralph Jones <rnj...@csn.net> wrote:
>Stigs wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
>> PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old 'chicks'
>> didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
>
>No...forty-year-old movie workers who had just seen several hundred million
>dollars pumped into their industry gave it 11 Oscars. And even they wouldn't
>
Specious statement. The acting was fine, the dialog and sub-plotting
often painful. As for Oscars, really -- by your logic to this end,
L.A. Confidential didn't have worthwhile acting by males ("they
wouldn't give" L.A. Confidential one for any of them,since none of
the men were even nominated! That was a travesty of course, as
either of the 3 leads were terrific.
No, Titanic got 2 nominations - that does not speak to bad acting.
Nor does losing the award, once nominated. That's one of the sillier
arguments here.
- A
--
===========================================================
Andrys Basten <and...@netcom.com>
CNE, Basten Micro Consulting
San Francisco/East Bay - 510/235-3861
Have music, will travel: piano, harpsichord, recorders
http://www.andrys.com -Online resources
http://www.andrys.com/indox.html -Peru photos w/Canon Elph
mr. e.
> >> PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old
'chicks'
> >> didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
> >
> >No...forty-year-old movie workers who had just seen several hundred
million
> >dollars pumped into their industry gave it 11 Oscars. And even they
wouldn't
> >give it one for acting. rj
> >
measuring a film's merit by what the academy thought of it.. great. does
anyone remember when Rocky beat out Taxi Driver in '76 (or '77.. can't
remember)? Case in point.
mr. e.
Jay Lorenz
Rocky actually beat out Paddy Chayefsky's brilliantly written Network in
1976...but your point is still just as valid.
Chris Bailey
Ralph Jones wrote in message <3538FB70...@teal.csn.net>...
>Stigs wrote:
>
>> [snip]
>
>> PLEASE, give the film it's due credit. Don't forget, 14 year old
'chicks'
>> didn't give the film 11 Oscars.
>
>No...forty-year-old movie workers who had just seen several hundred
million
>dollars pumped into their industry gave it 11 Oscars. And even they
wouldn't
>give it one for acting. rj
>
>
Or maybe they didn't give the acting awards because
a) The character "Jack Dawson" was too normal. To win a best actor award
there needs to be something that the actor can work with. That is not
Leo's fault.
b) The academy doesn't give many British awards, Sorry Kate; I guess
Rose de Witt Bukater/Dawson was too normal as well. Was it Marisa Tomei
that won supporting actress a while ago <cringe> and this year Helen
Hunt. For Gods sake!
c) Gloria only had to speak so really she didn't have much to work with.
What she did do was excellent though especially the flashback scenes
before telling her story.
Chris
Michael Brooke
Jay Lorenz <lor...@gusun.georgetown.edu> wrote:
> Rocky actually beat out Paddy Chayefsky's brilliantly written Network in
> 1976...but your point is still just as valid.
Actually, *both* points are valid - 'Rocky', 'Taxi Driver' and 'Network'
were all competing against each other for Best Picture, and 'Rocky' won.
For the record:
'Rocky' won Best Picture and Best Director (plus six more nominations)
'Network' won Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best
Supporting Actress (plus five more nominations including Best Picture)
'Taxi Driver' won nothing, despite four nominations (including Best
Picture).
Simon Caleb
Re: THE SECRET of TITANIC's popularity is 'Bad taste is universal'.
Simon Caleb.
Lone Wolf
Well said.
-----
Powerslave AKA Hitchhiker AKA Lone Wolf
My Kung-Fu is the best.
"A naked American man stole my balloons."
- An American Werewolf in London
"Guns don't kill people... the government does."
Dale
King of the Hill
"Oh my god! Jay Leno's chin killed Kenny!"
"You Bastard!"
- South Park
Alex Crouvier
Simon Caleb wrote:
>
> Re: THE SECRET of TITANIC's popularity is 'Bad taste is universal'.
>
> Simon Caleb.
There is some truth in that.
pet...@ms.com
In article <6htbh2$gqq$1...@heliodor.xara.net>#1/1,
"Simon Caleb" <si...@pixel.globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Re: THE SECRET of TITANIC's popularity is 'Bad taste is universal'.
>
> Simon Caleb.
>
>
But see if this were the case why don't most Hollywood
productions make $1,000,000,000.00?
Pjk
Gerhard Gruber
Destination: pet...@ms.com
From: Gruber Gerhard
Group: alt.movies.titanic
>In article <6htbh2$gqq$1...@heliodor.xara.net>#1/1,
> "Simon Caleb" <si...@pixel.globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Re: THE SECRET of TITANIC's popularity is 'Bad taste is universal'.
>>
>> Simon Caleb.
>>
>>
>
>But see if this were the case why don't most Hollywood
>productions make $1,000,000,000.00?
If this were true then Stallone would be filthy rich.
Richard J Briggs
pet...@ms.com writes
> "Simon Caleb" <si...@pixel.globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Re: THE SECRET of TITANIC's popularity is 'Bad taste is universal'.
>
>But see if this were the case why don't most Hollywood
>productions make $1,000,000,000.00?
True. And anyway, I don't get this 'bad taste' thing; is it objective
(i.e., if critics in general don't like it, it's bad taste), or
subjective (i.e., if Simon Caleb doesn't like it, it's bad taste)?
--
Cheers,
Rick
Liv
------------------------
My guess is:
Lots of violence, but not much direct violence. Violence (guns and
blood and brains in your teeth) makes some folks uncomfortable, or
snooty. Shares this feature with Volcano and Twister and Deep Impact
and so on. Probably one of the reasons they get made, along with their
appeal to the common man--they are about something that could actually
happen to them.
Lots of special effects.
A real tear jerky, simple minded, love story: easy to follow,
heartbreaking because it ends before the infatuation is over,
hopeless, and with a simple, honest, sexually non threatening male
that anyone would want for a brother, son, or boyfriend. (except for
me and Dorothy Parker, who said, after seeing Cocteau's Beauty and the
Beast, "I want my beast back."
It all pulled together and non of it was horrendously bad.
Liv
garba...@Ziplink.net
take out the garbage to reply
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing...
Richard J Briggs
Liv writes
>My guess is:
>
> Lots of violence, but not much direct violence. Violence (guns and
>blood and brains in your teeth) makes some folks uncomfortable, or
>snooty. Shares this feature with Volcano and Twister and Deep Impact
>and so on.
True. But the same lot got pretty damn snooty about Volcano (me too, in
that particular case) and Twister (which I quite liked 2nd time around,
when I knew that there was no point waiting on the edge of my seat for a
plot to turn up). Don't know about Deep Impact yet.
Anyway, the point about Titanic is that much of the initial press
response was just as negative as for those movies, as is a lot of the
more, uh, *superior* (read *smartass*) word-of-mouth. Full marks to
Cameron & the studio for making it happen, I say, when it could just as
easily have been another Waterworld.
> Probably one of the reasons they get made, along with their
>appeal to the common man--they are about something that could actually
>happen to them.
Jeez, I hope not ...
>Lots of special effects.
... Without which the movie would have been an infinitely lesser thing.
In the days before Cameron's earlier CGI work, it would've been another
Poseidon Adventure 'boat in a tank' flick. Now somewhere, there's gonna
be some '70s-retro-disaster-movie geek who thinks that would've been
better, but I say let's hear it for progress.
>A real tear jerky, simple minded, love story: easy to follow,
>heartbreaking because it ends before the infatuation is over,
>hopeless, and with a simple, honest, sexually non threatening male
>that anyone would want for a brother, son, or boyfriend. (except for
>me and Dorothy Parker, who said, after seeing Cocteau's Beauty and the
>Beast, "I want my beast back."
Oooh, cute.
>It all pulled together and non of it was horrendously bad.
I liked it coz it was a kind of cross between A Room With A View and a
generic Cameron flick (not yet decided whether the last section is
closer to Aliens or The Abyss yet) - a smorgasbord of my fave types of
movies. The script was nowhere near as good as A Room ..., or even
Aliens (tho' better than Abyss, I reckon), but as you say, it wasn't
horrendously bad either. Top end of mediocre, maybe? If movies were
judged on script quality alone, then I'd've put Titanic not far ahead
The Full Monty. (troll troll troll troll ...)
But that's like judging Hamlet by reading it on the page. It's a play,
and Titanic's a film. The script and acting were both pretty minimal
elements of the project - what makes it admirable for me was Cameron's
willingness (indeed, demands) to push the limits of what was possible.
Got a bit gushy there. Sorry.
>Liv
>garba...@Ziplink.net
>take out the garbage to reply
>
>If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing...
I did. And next time I'm gonna get him ...
Rick