@RFlagg

DOFP should do it. It starts in the future where the world's gone to shit and the last few X Men have a last stand. Wolverine gets sent back in time to change things. So now the filmmakers have a clean slate because everything forward from the '70s (the era W went back to) is rewritten.

Plus, the entire movie is worth it just for the Quicksilver scene.

Thanks

There are encouraging signs in the yt comments of the vid, there were a lot of requests along the lines of "how do we get them here?" which were answered by both the filmmaker with an online order form, and a pointer to Sarah Munir's kickstarter to import and promote them un the US and North America:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1a-jQrfz1DjaZmXc2kZPeaZtIx5iSrNwE2Lr6yN5TUYU/viewform?c=0&w=1
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1240116767/edible-cutlery-the-future-of-eco-friendly-utensils

"Automatically ok"? Not necessarily. But in cases where it makes sense, at a stretch even "plot sense" for the character to be there; yeah, I think that is OK.

The Last Samurai isn't a documentary. But, the general historical justification for Tom Cruise's character being in Japan is pretty much valid. Meiji was interested in the West -- clothes, technology, weapons, and military. He actually did hire Westerners to train his army, although from what I read it sounds like they were German, French, and Italian rather than American. Still, the movie portrays the general situation/setting with at least *decent* broad-strokes historical accuracy. LOADS of movies deviate from even this degree of historical accuracy *way* more without drawing complaints; particularly if their main purpose is entertainment and not education / documentary.


Your hypothetical reverse movie makes some valid criticisms. Even though it would have been historically possible for a Westerner to be in Japan at the time -- even to be involved with training a Western-style military -- it would be unlikely for such a person to get captured, run into a Shogun that speaks English, become a badass (or at least passable) samurai warrior, and end up playing a major role in politics and significantly influencing Emperor Meiji.

My defense against those criticisms is that, for me at least, the movie is entertaining; which is kinda the point. Your "Union Samurai" movie might be equally entertaining and therefore given an equal pass on historical inaccuracies by me.

The whole characters as a "lens through which the audience can appreciate a culture/history outside their own" issue is (slightly) more weighty to me. I don't think those are often necessary, but I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted if the movie maker feels that they are in order to sell tickets.

I love the Chinese historical novel "Three Kingdoms". A few years ago, John Wu made the movie "Red Cliff", mostly about one particular battle in the historical period portrayed in that book. For the Chinese audience, Wu made the movie in two parts, summed up about four and a half hours long. For the US / West, he made a version trimmed to just over two hours. Why? Because he (and a team of market researchers, I'm sure) knew that very few Westerners would go to see a 4+ hour long movie, entirely in Mandarin Chinese (with subtitles), about a piece of Chinese history from ~1800 years ago that very few in the West have ever heard of or know anything about.

I think the full 4+ hour long movie is great. In my personal top 10 favorite movies of all time, ahead of most Hollywood stuff. But I also understand that there's no way that movie would appeal to all but a tiny, tiny fraction of Western viewers in that full-on 4+ hour format. But, even though I personally think the cut-down 2 hour "US" version is drastically inferior to the full cut, I am glad that he made it because it gives a suitably accurate introduction to the subject matter to more people in the West (just like the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "Dynasty Warriors" videogames do), and makes that tiny, tiny fraction of Western people that know anything about it a little less tiny. While being entertaining along the way.

For other movies, sometimes the best way that a filmmaker can sell a movie to an audience that otherwise might not accept it (at least in large enough numbers to justify the production costs) may be to insert one of these "lens" characters for the audience to identify with. I don't think there is inherently anything wrong with that. It might not work for movies that are taking a more hardline approach to historical / contextual accuracy (ie., if Tom Cruise showed up in "Red Cliff" in circa 200AD China), but outside of those situations, if that is what the studio thinks it will take to sell tickets... Cool.

The Last Samurai is, like @ChaosEngine said, a movie primarily about an outsider learning a new culture (and accepting his own past). He serves as that lens character, but actually the hows and whys of his character arc are the main points of interest in the movie, at least to me.

I'm sure that an awesome, historically accurate movie could be made dealing with young Emperor Meiji, Takamori (who Katsumoto seems to be based on in The Last Samurai), and the influence of modernization on Japanese culture at the time. It could be made with no Western "lens" character, no overt influence by any particular individual Westerner, and be entirely in Japanese. But that movie wouldn't be The Last Samurai, wouldn't be attempting to serve the same purpose as The Last Samurai, and very likely wouldn't sell as many tickets (in the US) as The Last Samurai (starring Tom Cruise!) did. That wouldn't make it a worse movie, just an apple instead of an orange.

Have to disagree with Star Wars.

Without the massive appeal the series built, this movie wouldn't get many good reviews at all. The plot is an insane jumble of random events and plotholes that should have been embarrassing. To enumerate a few:

1) Randomly Melennium Falcon happens to be at the right place, right time (I can buy this, barely, because it's fun)

2) Before they can even have a full conversation (something the filmmakers seemed determined to avoid, even though, as this list shows, dialogue can make riveting cinema) HS and Chewie burst in. I could buy into this, if not for the rapid-fire pace of these events, as it is it just seems random and things are starting to get silly.

3) Before THEY can even have a full conversation not one, but two gangs HAPPEN upon the group, for no reason, except some executive was apparently worried about giving the audience a moment to reflect and MAYBE develop some connection with the characters.

4) Kylo Ren kicks ass. He's the only Force master EVER to stop a blaster bolt mid progress. He's got some serious juice!

5) Kylo Ren can't fight his way out of a paper bag (a bag named Finn) narrowly winning the fight and merely wounding the otherwise fairly useless ex-stormtrooper.

6) Kylo Ren is BEATEN by some chick with no training whatsoever! (Don't get me wrong, I like Rey, but the good guys are SUPPOSED to be weaker than the bad guys, and what's the point in Jedi training if she already kicks Evil's ass? )

7) WTF is up with this whiny Emo? He is, bar-none, the worst villain of the entire SW series thus far. It's not surprising that they defeat him, he's so useless, what's surprising is it takes them so damn long to beat his whining Emo shitty-at-lightsaber-duelling ass.

IMO the whole film was a hot mess that reeked of far too much studio interference which turns artistic vision into "more explosions!"

In summary, and this is totally true, my ten-year-old son, who loved the first 3 SWs (I won't let him watch the prequels) when asked what he thought of it replied, "Too many explosions." This is the mediocrity paradigm of big-budget Hollywood films at it's pinnacle.

The director of the movie "You're Next" applauded this 'homage'.

So wonderful

The Simpsons’ couch gag has become a great place for innovative filmmakers and artists to show off their take on the iconic nuclear family and the many denizens of Springfield. From the creators of Rick And Morty, to Don Hertzfeldt, Guillermo Del Toro, John K., and many others, all have left their individual stamp on the opening of the classic show and its opening segment. Now another artist has thrown his hat in the ring, albeit unofficially, with a gruesome blending of The Simpsons with Adam Wingard’s film You’re Next.

Lee Hardcastle is an experienced stop-motion animator that has applied his craft to a segment in The ABCs Of Death, a mash-up of Frozen and The Thing, and even a music video for the group Gunship. Now Hardcastle has brought that same off-kilter horror sensibility to his proposed couch gag for Springfield’s first family with a possibly NSFW-ish (due to clay violence and gore) and fairly disturbing short. Hardcastle’s couch gag opens serenely enough before devolving into a home invasion pastiche just like You’re Next—much to the appreciation and applause of Adam Wingard himself. It’s unclear although unlikely that Fox will actually use this couch gag on screen, but maybe it will help boost Hardcastle’s chances for crafting a Treehouse Of Horror intro/segment.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'filmmaking, film, movement, classic, cinematography, kurosawa, scene' to 'filmmaking, cinematography, kurosawa, scene, Every Frame a Painting' - edited by eric3579

BEST
FILMMAKER
EVER!!!
*quality

I want to hear the other interviews that didn't follow the party line. And only one boy would participate? Or only one boy had things to say that supported the viewpoint of the filmmaker?

Don't get me wrong -- I love this doll. I LOVE THIS DOLL.

Honestly,when it comes to action I just go by what strikes me as cinematically interesting, and what I enjoy. There tends to be a lot of action and other genre stuff among my favourite films, mostly because I try not to draw any distinctions between so-called "serious" films, and genre stuff like action/horror/sci-fi. If a film works, it works. It takes just as much thought and craft to make a really good action film as it does to make a really good drama. More, possibly.

My problem with a lot of contemporary big blockbuster action filmmaking is the idea that bigger is ALWAYS better. Bigger effects, bigger explosions, and longer, more drawn out action set-pieces. Like, if I see one more film where the third act is entirely devoted to an enormous action set-piece where a city is rocked by a big, over-the-top battle, I'm going to jump out a window.

My other big problem with most contemporary action is the style of shooting/editing that dictates that you put the camera as close to the action as possible and then just ping pong from one split-second close-up of something happening to another. There's no real coherence, just a jumble of imagery and the hope that the viewer will be fooled into thinking they're watching something exciting.

I appreciate films like the Raid 2 or John Wick because they're clearly made by people who understand what makes a good action scene exciting. They're well paced, exciting, and they're just fun to watch.

Making of it: http://vimeo.com/60009573 from https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/2oi204/this_is_it_256/cmnnlmp

*quality

Excellent breakdown. I love the side-by-side comparisons. Jackie Chan is the awesome.

Reminds me of behind the scenes of Rush Hour. The fight upstairs in the Chinese restaurant there's one gun and the American filmmaker wanted Jackie to toss it aside as if he would prefer to fight mano a mano.

Jackie pointed out the absurdity of that stupid concept altogether and made it so his character's focus in that scene was the exact opposite, to fight to get his hands on the gun, thus shutting the bad guy down.

It's awesome that he's done so many of his own stunts, but I feel bad for him because he's said one thing he loves about making films in America is they do everything they can to prevent him from getting hurt, and that's simply not the case in Hong Kong.

No. Joburg and the followup film were quality filmmaking.
This is terrible, wholely uninspired work that would only be good in a universe where Spielberg didn't exist. I have no idea how anyone can slog through the cliche enough to find any entertainment.

I misunderstood what @kitsch_ice meant initially as well.

He was saying that the YouTube channel that was initially embedded here was from one of those crappy/spammy "FunnyVideos" type channels who stole it from the original filmmaker's channel.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Awkward-and-touching-Filmmaker-gets-20-strangers-to-kiss

Awkward and touching. Filmmaker gets 20 strangers to kiss has been added as a related post - related requested by Zawash.