"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[mark antony]

Penton this probably got lost in the time of the snowy events but my q from a while back was:

Penton another Weinstein question, but not when is so and so coming out...Weinstein released two of the most disappointing and "could have been great" dvd's i've ever seen, namely the Bronston epic's Fall OT Roman Empire and El Cid. Does the deal include these titles?

Any ideas?

Regards

M

[DenonCI]

Penton,

I'm a Sharks fan and they had 8 guys playing in the games (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sec...key&id=7279425), so I know what you mean. Granted, the most played for Canada (Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton, Dan Boyle and Patrick Marleau), but Pavelski was involved in that amazing last second goal to send the game to OT. I told my kids the US would need to get lucky to win in OT because Canada had more team speed and better skill and with all that open ice 4V4, the grinding style wouldn't work too long. (Sadly I was right.)

[sharkshark]

yeah, Kris, that goes back to a converstation P and I shared about Der Wiesse Band... Longshot for the oscar for best cinematography, despite this win, but it certainly makes it intriguing come Sunday! A shoe-in, as I've said for months, for best foreign film...

[Kris Deering]

So does that mean my guess was right? It was the only B&W film that came to mind immediately (other than the small amount of B&W footage in the beginning of Antichrist, which looked incredible by the way).

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

So does that mean my guess was right? It was the only B&W film that came to mind immediately (other than the small amount of B&W footage in the beginning of Antichrist, which looked incredible by the way).

Yeah, I should have italicized "Der Weisse Band"

[Mr. Cinema]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

yeah, Kris, that goes back to a converstation P and I shared about Der Wiesse Band... Longshot for the oscar for best cinematography, despite this win, but it certainly makes it intriguing come Sunday! A shoe-in, as I've said for months, for best foreign film...

Foreign Film is always hard to predict. Pan's Labyrinth won 3 Oscars in 2006 and still lost Foreign to The Lives of Others.

Cinematography is easily one of the toughest to predict this year. I think Hurt Locker, Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, and White Ribbon could all be announced the winner. I went with Hurt Locker as I'm picking it for Picture and feel like they'll reward it with a few technical categories, in addition to Director.

[sharkshark]

Penton, you'll be happy to know I finally got around to watching my copy of D9.

Lovely little film, well done (and shot on both Sony -and- RED, how exciting...)

However, can you complain on my behalf that the orignal short wasn't included on the BD (as least, as far as I can tell) and that I had to watch the damn thing on Youtube! Grr...

[Penton-Man]

Wow, ever since the Associated Press article by Jake Coyle appeared online and quoted Martin Scorsese ……….
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100302/...s_film3d_drama

I see there is quite *the debate* raging on Jeff’s Insider’s thread between Craig et. al. vs. the proponents for 3D cinema….or, at least those open-minded to it.
Which reminds me to revisit a post I made last weekend and meant to provide a link for illustrative purposes but, just didn’t have the time back then.

One moment.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Bobby, I know you’re open-minded so I’ll toss this out (in my best Canadian accent) to other readers since I’ve offered very little commentary online about 3D movies.

Good 3D movies will not be a “gimmick”. Anyone who constantly refers to Stereoscopic 3D Cinema as such is uninformed and to me, sounds almost like for example, people calling “all blondes dumb”. The fact is, 3D filmmaking is already proving to be a complex technological science to do well. It is no more a “gimmick” than when a 2D cinematographer purposely uses a shallow depth of field in a scene to draw attention to an actor while making the remainder of the image in the frame purposely out of focus to achieve that end……something which is commonly done in traditional filmmaking day in and day out of which nobody complains or even gives a second thought to.

As the industry gains more experience, I believe filmmakers interested in doing modern day 3D are more inclined to treat it as another artistic tool to capture the attention of theater-goers and home theater enthusiasts by using 3D depth to accentuate thee emotional dynamics of a motion picture. For example, when the 3D convergence distance is deep behind the screen, subconsciously, it invokes a sense of a large empty space, majestic grandeur, etc. the opposite of an intimate setting. A traditional cinematographer would only have something like a panoramic view in his arsenal to achieve this same emotional dynamic.

Vocal antagonists to 3D who have little or no experience with stereoscopic cinema should be mindful of a little past cinematic history, namely, when sound for motion pictures first debuted in the olden days, some people also claimed that sound was “a gimmick” with critics sarcastically questioning if the motion picture industry was trying to make movies into musicals.

That being said, there is no guarantee that viewers will get quite the same robust magnitude of *3D impact* from home viewing as they have gotten from excellent commercial theatrical exhibition with 3D. Recent academic research (of which there is very little) in vision science related to 3D viewing supports the concept that is just not possible, or at least, impossible without risking visual fatigue and headache.

A technical paper by Hoffman et.al. published in 2008 which addresses what I’m talking about in greater detail is located here- http://www.journalofvision.org/8/3/33/article.aspx.
Their research suggests a ‘comfortable viewing’ range for how far 3D effects move behind and in front of the viewing screen without causing visual discomfort and fatigue.

In practical terms, what all the techno mumbo-jumbo means to stereographers, who author home versions of 3D movies for home theater displays (or any 3D content for that matter, meaning games, etc.) is that in order for 3D to be comfortable and not visually fatiguing during viewing with a home 3D display, it must be more compressed toward the screen (percentage-wise) as compared to that with commercial movie theater exhibition. In other words, it can’t be as *aggressive* in terms of depth of field (due to vergence-accommodation conflict) as theatrical exhibition can.

For instance, if you run the numbers and I did my math correctly, the academic research suggests that the 3D effect of an object or scene safely (without risking visual fatigue or at least intolerance) coming out from the screen towards the audience would be about 87% of the distance to you when seated about 65 ft. away from the screen in a commercial theater……..about 62% of the distance towards you when seated about 16 ft. away from a home theater screen…..about 14% of the distance towards you when seated about 20 inches away from your computer display and a measly 8% of the distance towards you when holding one of those handheld displays 10 inches from your eyes.

Get the drift?, the *3D impact* is non-linear. Decreasing returns as your screen is smaller and smaller in size…..without theoretically risking intolerable vergence-accommodation conflict and visual fatigue…..of which the viewers’ age and elasticity of the lens will also be determining factors.
Bonus points goes to anyone who can tell me what the chief agent of accommodation (focusing) of the eye is, i.e., I’m referring to a muscle in da eye.

Moving on.

Should you still get a ‘good/excellent 3D experience’ with 3D movies at home?
Yes, most definitely.

Will it rival or surpass that of the commercial theatrical 3D experience (provided those projector lamps are not on their last leg, and there is no asymmetrical luminance between them) ?
That would be tough……a very tough nut to crack based on the science to date.

As an aside, I was tempted to scope out Panny’s Olympic 3D Theater Pavilion in Vancouver as a lame excuse to put the whole trip on my expense account under……”international research”.

However, after the alcohol wore off following USA’s win over Finland in ice hockey to guarantee us a place in the final , common sense prevailed and got the best of me when I realized no way I could write off even a portion of the vacation without raising some peoples’ eyebrows.

For those who may not be following the Olympics, there’s a little hockey game on TV tomorrow.
Gotta run.

I meant to post the following as an adjunct to the above phrase (which, I’ve now bolded in red) for the benefit of those who didn’t attend Film School or who never had the opportunity to take a ‘Motion Picture 101’ course in college that covered cinematic history.

Criticism Terrible………
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2...remendous.html

Business Tremendous…….
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/movies/30box.html

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mark antony

Penton this probably got lost in the time of the snowy events but my q from a while back was:

Penton another Weinstein question, but not when is so and so coming out...Weinstein released two of the most disappointing and "could have been great" dvd's i've ever seen, namely the Bronston epic's Fall OT Roman Empire and El Cid. Does the deal include these titles?

Mark, please see your inbox for a PM.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

Penton, you'll be happy to know I finally got around to watching my copy of D9.

Lovely little film, well done (and shot on both Sony -and- RED, how exciting...)

However, can you complain on my behalf that the orignal short wasn't included on the BD (as least, as far as I can tell) and that I had to watch the damn thing on Youtube! Grr...

Thank you for the input. We are always looking for ways to improve the product.

Shark, you’re the ‘gun nut’ right?
Just for the record, and to give camera credit….where camera credit is due, all the gun-mount footage (when the camera was mounted to the end of a gun and pointed towards the ‘actors’) was shot with the Canon HF100 camera.
P.S.
Come to think of it, all the CCTV look footage was also captured with HF100’s too.

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Thank you for the input. We are always looking for ways to improve the product.

Shark, you’re the ‘gun nut’ right?
Just for the record, and to give camera credit….where camera credit is due, all the gun-mount footage (when the camera was mounted to the end of a gun and pointed towards the ‘actors’) was shot with the Canon HF100 camera.
P.S.
Come to think of it, all the CCTV look footage was also captured with HF100’s too.

ah, cute little vixias... nice.

Well, off to meet Wayne Gretzky (if all goes according to plan)... wish me luck

[Jeff Kleist]

Hey Penton, if you're interested, here's a breakdown of how Defying Gravity would have gone. I'm not thrilled that they wouldn't ever explain the artifacts, but I find the rest of it refreshing. Anyone with a show like that who gets canned should do that kind of breakdown once all hope of continuation is dashed

http://www.cliqueclack.com/tv/2009/1...m-the-creator/

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

ah, cute little vixias... nice.
Well, off to meet Wayne Gretzky (if all goes according to plan)... wish me luck

You're one lucky fellow . He's like Pele is down in Brasil.
Here’s hoping that he doesn’t arrive to you in the back of a pick-up trunk with a burnt out right front headlight –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYyBbuIS3E

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Hey Penton, if you're interested, here's a breakdown of how Defying Gravity would have gone. I'm not thrilled that they wouldn't ever explain the artifacts..........

Thanks for the link . I’ll be sure to read it later when I’ve got more time.

Keep in mind, you’re a science fiction connoisseur (to say the least).
Do you think that real Surgical residents and interns find Grey’s Anatomy to be an accurate portrayal of their training?

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

You're one lucky fellow . He's like Pele is down in Brasil.
Here’s hoping that he doesn’t arrive to you in the back of a pick-up trunk with a burnt out right front headlight –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYyBbuIS3E

You forget, while NBC was showing the interview with Biden, we saw that live...

Yeah, he was great, generous with his time... Got a pic, a brief conversation, and an autographed rookie card...

Was all cuz he launched his private label wines... As a boy from Cali, not sure you've ever drank stuff from Niagara, but it might be amusing for you to grab a case of his reserve...

[Jeff Kleist]

Do you think that real Surgical residents and interns find Grey’s Anatomy to be an accurate portrayal of their training?

Well, I was complaining about a story element, not a procedural. But I would hold Grey's equally at fault for those issues. You can be accurate AND tell your story With every other show like this there would be a payoff, maybe not till the end, just like there's been with LOST, finally explaining what the numbers mean for example.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by sharkshark

You forget, while NBC was showing the interview with Biden, we saw that live...

Yeah, he was great, generous with his time... Got a pic, a brief conversation, and an autographed rookie card...

Biden has a rookie card?

[sharkshark]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Biden has a rookie card?

Yup,

[sharkshark]

...Just got through my BD of Generation Kill (had seen it on HBO when it aired), and I came across a wonderful little bit of the internet in digging into the verisimilitude of the tale:

http://commentaryongenerationkill.blogspot.com/

This is a direct response to the book by one of the interviewees. In the comments section, the author directly responds to the criticisism.

What's remarkable is not only the level of prose exhibited, but the sheer civility and respect for what's at heart ireconcilable differences of opinion regarding something that is, after all, a matter of life and death (the bombing of a vilage, shooting of a man, etc.)

I've seen in many internet forums useless bickering and banter, with childish infighting and posturing. It was an absolute revelation to see such maturity ehibited in the blog above on a blogger thread from all commenters.

For those that like to delve a bit deeper, I highly recommend taking the time. This ain't no "skimming" post, like the show that drew me to the find the post in the first place, it's something that requires effort, patience, and an openness to the ideas being expressed, as contradictory as they'll appear in the end.

The first time through I thought GK was a well made, decent war film from the guys that did the Wire. On this, the day before the flawed but laudible Hurt Locker is likely to win Best Picture, I think Generation Kill holds up extraordinarily well to any representation of the Iraq war, certainly surpassing any feature film I can think of. On second viewing, it truly does shine, and is certainly a work that will only gain respect in the future. Brave and ballsy, it's one of those films that HBO, when the get it right, can do like no other company.

If you haven't seen it, I recommend picking up the BD set. If you have seen it, check out the blog above and revel in the sheer thrill of open and honest discourse in the guise of an internet blog. Go figure...