http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:57:53 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/02/210453.php#comment-705512 finally got around to watching the infamous There Will Be Blood... Daniel-Day Lewis' performance was top-notch. He takes well to the overbearing, violent father-figure role -- he also did this in Gangs of New York. 705512@blogcritics.org Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:57:53 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/03/02/210453.php#comment-699583 Well that was a nice review of the film. Thank goodness this reviewer chose not to compare the film to one of Kubrick's films. I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare this film with the works of S. Kubrick but it does indeed attempt to approach it. I must clearly state however, that it's attempted style-copy fails in each attempt. I'm going to blame its failure on the editing and mismatched musical soundtrack. The editing of the film usually done these days under strict control of the director, almost seemed to intend on lengthening the runtime just for the sake of being able to add the word "epic" to the list of adjectives used for it's description. The scoring for the film I contend was an attempt to rip off the production company by producing "loops" of percussion and noise that didn't sync to anything other than the composer's mood or "feeling" established at the beginning 3 or 5 seconds of each scene. That there are many 2 to 4 minute scenes speaks to the amount nauseating repetition within each scene and occasionally these "loop-tracks" would span several scenes without any changes. So the composer spent about one one-hundredth of the time and effort that would normally be required to produce a typically "good" scoring of a film of this length. As is I can produce all these scores myself on my computer at home in a $5,000 studio in about 2 weeks time. Many of the "loops" additionally contained recognizable sound effects from very inexpensive instrument and effects CDs available on the web for well under $100. Either problem if remedied would bring the quality of this film indeed much closer to a Kubrick level of standards. If the scenes were edited down to a more reasonable length the soundtrack would require less repair as a result and if even only the soundtrack were scored professionally the scenes might not cause the tedium that had me wanting to walk out of the theater on many occasions. Additionally, reviewers of this film could add interest and intrigue by mentioning the real world counterpart that the Daniel Plainfield character was indeed based on. Of course that would require them to do a bit of research - gawd forbid. 699583@blogcritics.org Tue, 4 Mar 2008 02:03:42 EST