SubJeff on 19/9/2019 at 16:46
I enjoyed Alita far more than I expected. The graphic on her was odd though. I don't get why they just didn't use the actress.
Sulphur on 19/9/2019 at 16:50
When I read dema's post, I first read wildness as 'wideness', and I was nodding my head: yes, dema, that is correct. She really does have wide eyes.
As for why they overrode her face with a digital facsimile? To make her 'other'ness absolutely unavoidable. She's not human, and the way people dealt with her would be on those terms. At least, that's how I interpreted it. The more boring version of the truth is off on IGN where they say Rodriguez apparently wanted her to look like she did in the manga.
I've got nothing much to add about the movie. Frankly, it was about all right. Good visuals, shallow plot featuring some dependably fizzy Rodriguez direction and action, but about 3/4th of the way through I had the nagging suspicion that nothing was going to get resolved in a satisfactory way, and was promptly rewarded with quite the non-ending. Ah well.
Thirith on 19/9/2019 at 17:07
I might feel differently if I read Crichton now, but back when I read the same novels as you, dema, I always felt that while his prose was just about functional, it did function tremendously well in the terms you've outlined. I never felt that he was one of those writers who's actually really bad at writing prose but who somehow managed to have engaging plots nevertheless. I am kinda curious if I'd still think so now, 25+ years later.
rachel on 19/9/2019 at 18:24
Quote Posted by Sulphur
As for why they overrode her face with a digital facsimile? To make her 'other'ness absolutely unavoidable. She's not human, and the way people dealt with her would be on those terms. At least, that's how I interpreted it. The more boring version of the truth is off on IGN where they say Rodriguez apparently wanted her to look like she did in the manga.
Well there's also the fact
she was born on Mars, making her quite literally an alien there on Earth. You'll notice
Michelle Rodriguez's character and presumably all the other Martian berserkers have that same look.
demagogue on 20/9/2019 at 12:42
Hmm, the original Aelita was queen of Mars, so I can't imagine the renaming is a coincidence now.
I thought it was fine in the sense they were clearly going for a stylized art direction and her look fit the bill. They wanted her to be in uncanny valley territory, and there she was.
Another thing in Alita's favor, to counter Sulph's reaction, my flight actually landed with another like 50 minutes left in the movie, just after the halfway point--just after they tore off the big-arm-Asian-guy's arm--and I didn't watch that last half until a few days later. Looking back, it actually finished around the high point, and I'd already formed a pretty good opinion of it. Then the rest of it was just for the record... The roller ball part was what it was clearly moving towards, and it had some cool sequences, but mid-way that's really where I think the whole thing just dissolved into Transformer 2 fight scene whatever, just tell me what happens...
Gryzemuis on 20/9/2019 at 14:53
OK, I' watch it. Just because of the music and your recommendation.
I'll discuss Clan Of Xymox in the music thread.
Sulphur on 20/9/2019 at 16:14
Quote Posted by raph
Well there's also the fact
she was born on Mars, making her quite literally an alien there on Earth. You'll notice
Michelle Rodriguez's character and presumably all the other Martian berserkers have that same look.
Clearly that's because
they're all cyborgs from the same battle unit? Either way, same difference. I had forgotten the origin, though.
@dema: confused by your timeline. Are you saying the high-point was at the part you left off, with 50 minutes to go? In which case I'd agree, but there's too much focus on the motorball race for the sake of requiring a set piece. It's already a weird device because it's hard to believe that someone winning a violent race would afford them entry to the literal higher echelons of a society - it doesn't jive in terms of what sort of societal advantage that would confer to a presumably upper-crust civilisation; so the viewer's already skeptical about the purpose of it absent any more information.
The fact that
it ends with her winning it after losing weaksauce wossname, Hugo? and we don't see a hint of whether all this work was for her to just get dicked over again sours the final scene, when you're clearly intended to read it as something triumphant and redemptive. But it's not either of those things, really; she's not at Zalem yet, and the dissonance there is hard to ignore.
demagogue on 21/9/2019 at 09:29
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Clearly that's because
they're all cyborgs from the same battle unit? Either way, same difference. I had forgotten the origin, though.
@dema: confused by your timeline. Are you saying the high-point was at the part you left off, with 50 minutes to go? In which case I'd agree
Yes, that's what I was saying. So we're in agreement.
But I was saying it in retrospect. At the time I left off of course I couldn't have known that that was around the high point. (And even in retrospect, it was already by my memory of where I had left off, which was already a few days old.) I just knew up to that point (at the earlier time) that I was really liking it, where it was going, & it was on a high, and I suppose expecting it to reach even higher highs when it inevitably got to the Moterball part.
But I wanted to give a review that covered everything, so that's why I kept going on to the motorball race, but I see that I didn't organize my thoughts all that well.
I might not have said this, but what I was thinking anyway was that the movie set up the first motorball rally to be the high point, and I was granting that it had some cool visuals and all just in pure action movie terms, but it wasn't actually all that high a point just because so much was going on in the plot to begin with it wasn't set up to pay off (not even getting to the level of detail you're talking about, which is another layer). And mid-way through it when
she broke out of the race is actually when I thought the plotting started to derail and quickly fall apart. So that's another knock against it.
Even in that last third there were some great visuals and action sequences, so I didn't mind too much. It was what I set myself up to enjoy from the beginning, so it paid off for me in that way, and I was just happy that the first half of it actually had some great plotting, character work, and storytelling too, if you want to frame it that way.
Gryzemuis on 21/9/2019 at 12:49
I watched (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Spot_%28TV_series%29) Zone Blanche (Black Spot). Season 1, made in 2017, has 8 episodes, is French, was picked up by Netflix this year. Season 2 was released on Netflix last June.
Not exceptional. (Like Dark, Sharp Objects or Twin Peaks). But good, and entertaining enough to keep watching. A remote village, in the middle of the French woods. The village has an unexpectedly high death/murder rate. Local police, with the help of an outside district attorney, try to solve these cases. While progressing through the individual cases/episodes, larger background stories slowly develop.
What I especially like, is the fact that this is French. Not American, not British. Something else. I like that very much. I would love it if Netflix (or someone else) would publish a Russian or Korean or whatever series. I know there are lots of Scandinavian police/detective series. But for some reason, they remind me too much of their British counter-parts. Anyone got a good suggestion for a Scandinavian series ? Preferably one that has a bit more content than the typical "whodunnit". (I remember (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killing_%28Danish_TV_series%29) The Killing was supposed to be good. Correct ? Is it more than just a police/detective show ?). I've seen the Dragon Tattoo girl series 10+ years ago. I thought that was boring. Any other suggestions ? (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bridge_%282011_TV_series%29) The Bridge maybe ? Something Italian or Spanish maybe ?
Gonna watch Zone Blanche season 2 next.
Then I have to hurry and rewatch Mr Robot season 1-3, so I will be in time to watch the new season 4 in October.
demagogue on 21/9/2019 at 13:17
The best Scandinavian series I've seen lately was Occupied (Norwegian: Okkupert) about Norway being quietly (at first) occupied by Russia. It was right after the quiet occupation & annexation of Crimea so it suddenly felt like something that could just happen one day. The geopolitics part isn't even the important part IMO; if you took away the historic paranoia of sharing a border with Russia (important to the target audience but not really me), it could have been fictional countries. It's just fascinating to see how an occupation & puppet government and all of that stuff familiar from the Cold War era would play out in our current era. And it's played like an historic drama / action movie, so it's fun to watch.
The others I have on my list are Danish, Rejseholdet/Mobile Unit, which I think is what made police procedurals a thing there (the episodes are kind of quaint and cliche by the police show standards now, but it's the classic anyway), and Riget/The Kingdom which I guess is exactly the kind of supernatural medical drama horror you'd expect Lars von Trier to make, for better and worse.