comment #1

JVD says ...

Glad you're letting up on The Beard, Jeff. Especially when it comes to the guy's dexterity in turning his camera into a character of its own.

Spielberg is highly skilled at long takes and the blocking/camera choreography. Those uninterrupted takes, coupled with use of a zoom lens, were responsible for "Munich's" many taut set pieces. Hell, that great shot of the camera zooming in and out of traffic while Tom Cruise escapes New Jersey in "War of the Worlds" was perhaps the most impressive shot in the whole CGI-laden movie. It's a perfect example of properly deployed computer trickery.

comment #2

David Ehrlich says ...

um, that sounds completely antithetical to what's really going on in herzog's cinema - his search for the ecstatic truth. i understand why you might be compelled to make the comparison, as at first gloss herzog's approach is very inviting to the idea that stately grace and practical recreation = a truth laid bare, but... as the man himself would likely say, that would only reveal the accountant's truth. watch aguirre... look at the boat in the trees or the impromptu and physically impossible rags-to-riches costume change ursula undergoes... everything might happen in front of the audience, but it's a cinema dedicated to startling illusions, which conspire to reveal a far greater truth than simply not "cheating the audience with quick cuts" ever could.

comment #3

actionman says ...

The overall visual design of Munich is extraordinary.

comment #4

K. Bowen says ...

Well, that's the first halfway OK still from the movie. Unlike the ubiquitous one with Indy in the back seat telling the kids up front that they have a one-in-10,000 chance to win a free rocket launcher if they buy the right breakfast cereal.

comment #5

snoopy_says_bleah says ...

A friend of mine worked as an editor on some Spielberg-produced TV. Spielberg sat down and watched a cut and could tell immediately when a B-camera is being used and had an almost visceral reaction against it.

(B-camera, as I'm sure all of you know, is the second camera rolling on a scene. Usually, both cameras are on the same actor and B-camera just gets a different angle, slightly wider shot, whatever.)

But his issue, editorially, is that when you go from an A-camera shot to a B-camera reverse, the eyelines don't match and it ruins any sort of emotional moment you're trying to build.

Apparently, it's a bad TV habit from the 90s -- when you're trying to get as much coverage as you can in 12 hours -- that's spread to film. If you watch for it, you can tell what he's talking about.

comment #6

Jay T. says ...

The over-editing of action sequences is my single biggest pet-peeve in Hollywood films over the past decade (second only, perhaps, to the over-use of CGI). Let's hope the success and techniques of this film (assuming Spielberg does exactly what he says he has) rubs off on other filmmakers. Over editing leads to a tremendous loss in a scene's sense of geography, and I really fucking hate it.

comment #7

lazespud says ...

It's funny that spielberg is using the "comedy" of his action scenes as his excuse for lesser cuts; because that's the one aspect that spielberg regularly fails at. Think of 1941, with its fantastic, detailed, yet utterly humorlesss sequences. Think of the elaborate opening sequence in temple of doom. It was clearly intended to be funny; funny it was not.

I would be pleased to see the pendulum swing back towards old-fashioned action. It's to spielberg's credit that he really took pains to praise the Bourne film and then point out why he was different. I suspect that the last Bourne movie will end up representing a pinnacle of a type of action film that will increasingly be viewed as dated--typifying the mid 2000s, sort of like the comedy bravado of Lethal Weapon and Die Hard just scream "late-80s".

comment #8

corey3rd says ...

who needs cuts when you're CGI crazy in the shot?

comment #9

admiralmpj says ...

I was really enjoying Iron Man, until the last ten minute battle, when someone...apparently...replaced Jon Favreau with Michael Bay. Hyperknetic editing does no one any good. It makes the action sequences look like crap, and it makes things impossible to follow on anything except Home Video.

comment #10

markj says ...

Somebody please let Ratner, Bay, Wiseman and the other members of the Hack Pack read this piece.

comment #11

Spacesheik says ...

Someone tell Chris Nolan to read this article cause I sure as shit didnt enjoy the 'action choreography' in BATMAN BEGINS (otherwise a very good film) especially the warehouse sequence, can we like have regular fight scenes where one can *see* Batman kick someone's arse in a wide shot - I mean even Tim Burton could manage that.

comment #12

storymark says ...

The lack of clear shots of Batman in the werhouse fight in Begins at least made sense contextually. He was the bogey man, they never saw him clearly, and the visuals mirrored that.

I was much more annoyed by the same technique in the later action scenes, when that pretense was gone, and he was fighting characters who knew exactly who he was. The behind-the-scnes doc on the DVD were more fun to watch, because the choreography was actually pretty cool, and you could see it.

comment #13

Gnome de Guerre says ...

I wonder why Spielberg didn't exert more influence on how the final fight in Transformers was cut/shot.

comment #14

adaml says ...

Great to hear this. Spielberg is absolutely right except for that bit about The Bourne Ultimatum editing being fantastic. It's shit.

comment #15

BurmaShave says ...

Speaking of Herzog, I just caught RESCUE DAWN last night, a very good movie with a great Christian Bale performance, that was almost entirely killed by critical apathy. Shame!

comment #16

btwnproductions says ...

The opening musical/screwballl chase scene in TEMPLE OF DOOM is one of the best-choreographed and -directed scenes ever. Abd it's a riot--one topper after another. Agreed that the gigantism of 1941 kills the jokes, but those sequences are exquisitely designed and edited.

comment #17

p.Vice says ...

So.... I'm not the only one who thought about Nolan after reading this. Fancy that.

Jeff, I hope you realize that Spielberg has been fighting the good fight for years... I think it's valid to knock him for putting his producer tag on crap that is completely antithetical to his directorial style, but even his most problematic movies as a director are imbued with a Hollywood classicism that even Scorsese usually can't match. Isn't it time you admit that this whole anti-Spielberg campaign was a reaction to the overblown Munich hype?

comment #18

A.H. says ...

Spielberg's greatest strength is in directing action. It always has been. It's so effortless for him, comes so naturally to him, he really doesn't even seem to think about it -- it just flows. There is no other director working today who can match him. No one else can pack the screen with as much activity and make it look so effortless. Other directors rely on crutches such as slow-mo, shaky cam, far-too-closely cropped framing, and yes, too many cuts.

Why Spielberg is kissing ass by praising crap like the Bourne movies? He's one of the few guys who doesn't need to kiss ass. He should just come out and say "Hey Hollywood, you don't know to do action. I do. Let me show you."

comment #19

The Pope says ...

It is really coincidental, but I happened to come upon National Treasure which was screened on TV over the weekend. I disliked it intensely when I saw it in theatres and I wanted to check out why I had such an allergic reaction. The thing that hit me (other than the whole crass enterprise where Cage gets the treaure, the gril AND THE MONEY... [Indy was never about the money and true treasures are priceless... but then that perhaps is Bruckheimer for you]. The thing that hit me was I had been watching Raiders as a gear up to Indy IV... and what is the diifference (other than the genius and the hack)? The choreogprahy. A lot of the time, the camera is stock still in NT and as Snoopy-Eyes pointed out, the B, C, D and E cameras were rolling to capture the action and what kept the pace going was the cutting. But there was no movement, no grace, no... JOY. And that is perhaps why Spielberg's images work so well with Williams' music... in a way, they are both composers... reminds me of One Upon a Time in the West which Morricone scored BEFORE a frame was shot and Leone timed Claudia Cardinale's walk along the train station platform, into the station master's office and the camera tracks along and then cranes up over the roof as the music reaches its crescendo.

comment #20

Jay T. says ...

"Think of the elaborate opening sequence in temple of doom. It was clearly intended to be funny; funny it was not."

I didn't realize J.D. Salinger was a regular on this site...

comment #21

Richardson says ...

You should've said:

He clearly thought he could write like J.D. Salinger; J.D. Salinger he was not.

comment #22

lazespud says ...

Though I didn't think for one second of writing like Salinger (I've not read anything by him other than Catcher in the Rye 25 years ago... I was thinking more along the lines of yoda), I'll take the back-handed compliment that is actually a put-down but then again is sort of a compliment....

comment #23

moviemaniac2002 says ...

You can snipe at Spielberg all you want...but
in terms of camera movement and editing, he is
an absolute master...and sadly onei of the last
practitioners (along with Scorcese) of what
Hitchcock referred to as "pure cinema".
It's profoundly depressing that action movies
have fallen into the hands of ADD idiots like
Bay, Ratner and the massively over-rated Paul
Greengrass. (What great innovators these guys
are...chopping up sequences into visual gibberish
and disconnecting the audience from any
comprehension or emotional ties to what they're
watching. The only funny thing about this is that
they all think they're action-sequence geniuses
as they grind their footage into music-video sewage.)

comment #24

D.Z. says ...

Sheik and mark: 'Begins wasn't meant to be action-oriented.

Gnome: Why did he pick Bay period? The guy killed his company.

moviemaniac: Ratner's ok, when it comes to action; what he lacks in are good one-liners.

More tv spots @ http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2008/IJKLM/Indiana-Jones/trailer.php
.

comment #25

Bob Violence says ...

'Begins wasn't meant to be action-oriented.

Great, then we'll look out for to the eventual director's cut that removes all the action scenes. In the meantime we'll talk about what's actually in the film.