come anticipate Miami Vice with me

the tv series is more about style and flash, and the plotlines are thin

The movie was 90% style and flash with a weak plotline!

the plot was kinda weak but i liked the world it took you into, the triple-frontier, haiti, rival agencies

xpost I wouldn't say the plotline was weak, it was simple sure in that it was an undercover bust of a drug ring and not much else, but the framework within that was much more developed w/ how deep they went into it. The Gong Li romance was kind of tacked on.

Being a Michael Mann movie, of course style and mood played a large role in it, but what I meant about the television show is that it was more 'candy'.

television show was "oooh, fancy clothes, shiny cars, beautiful Miami beaches, girls in bikinis, and great pop music...oh yea there's some cop stuff going on too"

movie had great shots of offshore beaches and open water, but also lots of grainy film stock and shots of the seedy white trash Miami underbelly and a lot more grime to it. I mean seeing slow motion captured exit wounds and watching a dude's arm get ripped off by bulletfire = gritty as it gets.

still wouldn't say the plotline was most of the movie because Mann invested so much into the visuals, but maybe closer to 40-45%.

movie did have some gorgeous images in it tho that's for true

xxpost one of my favorite moments is where Crockett notices his cell signal is gone due to phone jamming technology and he says "what's this doing on a dope deal?"

the grainy film stock was video i think

probably. i know very little about making films, mind you, so half my terminology is probably horseshit.

have directors cut and theatrical dvds; neither has the trailer, frown emoticon

grainy stock was digi cams running at high gain. Loved the look in Miami Vice but it made Public Enemies look like some video behind-the-scenes footage of actors acting and bugged me all through it.

i think the problem w/digital video that i have is a lot of directors seem entranced by it as much for the speed with which filming can be accomplished as much as its look. i guess it could be argued that the visual style lends some kind of immediacy to the proceedings, something which can be missing in film, but i'm really not sure that any of the films that have used it wouldn't look better with actual film stock and i'm not sure the "immediacy" thing isn't bullshit.

that said i think it worked in miami vice and collateral, but i don't think it worked better than film may have though since mann probably used it for the ability to capture certain nightscapes more than anything i'm willing to concede that point.

need to revisit 'public enemies' but i thought the use of digital was a revelation there, a new way of doing period shit. 'boardwalk empire' looks like a really dull and miscast and did i mention boring bore next to it. sometimes he went a bit far, with the gun-flashes, but sometimes art is about letting go and abandoning good taste, like the dude says in 'black swan'.

I though Public Enemies looked really bland and lifeless. No character to the lighting.

Would love to see a Michael Mann movie shot on a Canon 5D II (which has a sensor larger than any video camera or 35mm motion picture film).

i luv this movie seen it like 5 times, mann 4 lyfe

i saw this three times in the theatre!

still remember dude in the crowd gasping "oHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" when Jamie Foxx shotgunned out John Ortiz's insides

dammit now I wanna watch this, gotta see where I put the dvd

haha

i saw it x2 in the theater, watched on back to back nights when it as on tv a few months ago, its just so engrossing and rad

feel like Heat and Mohicans are mann's only unambiguously great movies, and everything else is a mixed bag.

― marios balls in 3d for 3ds (Princess TamTam), Monday, January 31, 2011 1:16 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

crazy talk manhunter pwns all

also mohicans doesnt have hardcore mann vibes so w/e

Manhunter is amazing. fuck Ralph Fiennes, he's a good actor but is he who you really think of when you imagine off-kilter serial killer? Noonan IS the Tooth Fairy.

also love The Insider, even tho there's only one bullet in it and it's in the mailbox

public enemies was a mixed bag visually - there was too much motion blur and artifacting, but there were some nicely shot scenes too. it did make me think about the possibilities re: shooting period stuff in DV... i reread From Hell last year and eddie campbell did such an amazing job on the nighttime scenes that I had to imagine what it'd be like to shoot them all in DV.

still think collateral is the best thing mann did in the 00s, especially for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmKR6evZRQQ

also mohicans doesnt have hardcore mann vibes so w/e

― ice cr?m, Monday, January 31, 2011 6:05 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

heh, wrong

u just dont know what mann vibes really are mannn

DONT START W/ME TAMTAM

lol anyway public enemies was uneven, but the high points were vv high, def some moments where i felt like i was seeing something new and brilliant in the world of movies

fukkin <3 collateral

collateral was dope but cruise and fox are both uncool tryhards which is somewhat off putting in combo, feel like it wouldve been better if the fox roll had been played by someone more chill

Collateral would have been better served if Mann had held Javier Bardem in close-up for 159 minutes.

yo homie

manhunter's good but i always found it a bit cold - def need to see it again though, its been a long time

mohicans is just amazing. has some of my favorite mann movie weaponry, from the gunstock clubs to the long rifles and muskets. if you started a discussion about the best screen villains of the 90s, you'd have to start with Magua and gary oldman in the professional and work from there. and its genuinely stirring/moving in a way mann's never approached again. the end sequence, where the synthesized score drops out and is replaced w/the live celtic sounding track that plays throughout magua's pursuit, is breathtaking. and when they catch up with magua, it's russell means not the white protag who gets to exact vengeance. and it has guys saying 'kan-tuck-ee.' perfect movie basically.

never seen it

idk i shd try again... i like it but mann's thing is photographing cities, is it not?

(+ go-fast boats)

when i go into a mann film i am fiending for that extreme stylized cosmic shit, mohicans is cool but its sort of a tease as far as hardcore mann vibes, its too human

Day-Lewis is inhuman!

It makes perfect sense that Mann chose one of the most popular shitty classics ever inflicted on totally suspecting high school students.

hah yeah DDL actually gives the worst performance in that movie, but it's possible that it's just not a very rewarding role.

cruise is awesome in collateral btw. foxx is good in it too but he's more suited to playing scared cab drivers than badass undercover agents, he doesnt bring much physicality to the table which is what mann generally demands of his leading bros

public enemies is on tv right now, my favorite scene is when purvis guns down pretty boy floyd in an orchard... cant believe channing tatum was in this

Would smh Billy Crudup.

*downloads mohicans*

lol at "leading bros", that is basically it. who is the best leading bro?

"miami vice" is great but i still think it's a tad long

"collateral" is better & also has some of his most breathtaking scenes, altho cruise chews some scenery in that bitch like it's big league chew

still think "ali" is hella underrated even by mann stans

That's the one where Jon Voight as FDR rises unaided from his wheelchair, walks into the ring, and knocks out Foreman, right

Collateral is fantastic too. think I bought that dvd the day it came out

i think "ali" his most beautifully shot movie

I would read a contrarian take on Ali; at the time I didn't think his mythmaking worked when supporting an actual legend. I need to rewatch it.

will smith i just cant, its a tragedy, dont want to talk abt it

Ali's a great looking movie with an amazing opening, that shot of ali walking out of the tunnel at the stadium in zaire, and a cool ted levine cameo - but it's kinda sterile and dull and does nothing to illuminate what kind of man Ali was, and also is maybe overly reverent towards him imo