Well class ...any criticisms?
I've been trying not to comment too much on the captured moments. To leave it up to interpretation. But you know... This is from Brian DePalma's classic Carrie. And DePalma is arguably a critics filmmaker. He makes movies for people who love debating movies. I'm really starting to think this 20:07 project is hyper revealing about the movies as represented by their random moments.
Or is this just projection, the brains way of making order from chaos?
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13 comments:
It's both.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh, Carrie.
I remember seeing this for the first time when I was something like 12 and not liking it (the pig sequence made me wanna throw up). But I watched it again recently (after you gave it an A) and, yeah, it's a flatout masterpiece. I've watched it again since too. So good.
I can't even count how many times I've seen this movie by now.
I wish Sissy's semi-heralded "return to horror" would've been more substantial than the one-two limp-wristed punch of The Ring 2 and An American Haunting; she gave one of the greatest performances in any horror film - or any genre really - in Carrie.
I'm firmly of the mind that hers is one of the greatest film performances. Period.
But I'm loving the 20:07 project, mostly for what you mention, Nathaniel: Using such a random mechanism highlights the film's distinctiveness in interesting and surprising ways.
As you may have noticed, I've stolen the idea (with link o'course) and riffed on it too...
A couple questions:
1. Now, with this series you've proven that you have something I certaintly don't, lol. It's obviously some kind of DVD Play program, but all the ones I have on mine are freakishly clever that when I screenshoot, it makes a black rectangle where the filme was in the shot, or if the film is still playing and I have it in Paint, the black spot is invisible and I see the player, in Paint. I don't where this question actually leads.
2. What's with all the contributors? Just curious.
Yet to see Carrie, just like 97% of good cinema.
If you haven't seen Carrie, you should watch it some time soon. It's a great film. And I agree with ja; Sissy delivered a phenomenal performance.
JD, definitely watch Carrie. It so enthralling.
If nothing else (and lord knows many have tried to tear him down) DePalma knows how to direct individual scenes like nobodies business. The prom sequence just... wow. It just turns out that everything in Carrie turned out well too.
Ja, I fell asleep during The Ring Two when I saw it at the cinema and I think I missed Sissy. I vaguely remember something like her on a hospital bed? I dunno. That whole movie's an incomprehensible blur. Except the deer sequence. My god, the deer seqeunce is branded onto my brain due it's insane hilarity.
Carrie is a great film, but forgive me, because the first thing that happened when I looked at the screenshot is I heard "The Greatest American Hero" theme song in my head. Help me!
plug it up, Carrie!!!!!!
I'm loving this series, man
See how William Katt, in the extreme foreground, is in focus, and Sissy, in the extreme background, is ALSO in focus? Amazing that at the 20:07 mark, you've happened upon one of De Palma's "split diopter" shots, where he's using a lens that is split down the middle, so that its focus on the lefthand side is on whatever's close, and on the right hand side is on what's far away.
(If he had used a normal lens, he would've been able to focus sharply on one of these two characters here, but not both at the same time...one of them would've been out-of-focus).
He's the only director I can think of who uses these lenses on anything like a regular basis, as a way of doing splitscreen without doing splitscreen...of showing you that there's more than one thing going on, by dividing your focus between two planes. These are *really* cool shots, I think, and it's just so nice that one of them happened to show up at the 20:07 mark here.
This is such a great movie; thanks for reminding us that it's time to watch it again.
Deep focus shots in film are used to show a connection between the two subjects in the frame.
Yes, I agree about the deep focus...but my point is that this isn't just deep focus...it's two different focuses out of the same lens. See how Katt's hair is out of focus where it crosses the centerline into the righthand side of the screen? Because it's passing onto the other side of the split diopter, the side that's focused on Spacek. He's setting up two planes, rather than deep focus, here.
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