The Hot Blog

YES.

Oh, man.

First of all, I'd say that Berg's Friday Night Lights TV pilot is substantially better than his movie. The movie goes about an inch deeper than the standard football movie but never really wants to say anything substantial or deep about the culture we're looking at.

Second, I'd say that while The Kingdom flirts with the idea of twisting the cliches, in the end it came back home and embraced them pretty much all (they're the A-Team in Saudi Arabia - but they're sensitive! No, wait, they're still bossing the Saudis around and smarter and funnier) with an ending that was straight out of the Paul Haggis playbook.

No clue on Hancock, but I doubt even the mighty Berg could have included hardcore x-rated penetration in an Iron Man movie. (Yes, I know that's not what DP meant, but it sure is what he said).

Have you ever heard anyone with good taste or a shred of filmmaking knowledge use the term "shakey-cam?" It's something used by people from an...older generation that aren't used to "the new," those that know nothing, and a small segment of the population prone to motion sickness. The term is "handheld." Why would anyone think someone is intentionally shaking the camera? And I'm sorry, but Greengrass' films wouldn't have half the intensity or immersion for the audience if they were shot on a dolly or a locked off camera.

Berg uses it because it gets you right in there. It makes you feel like you're part of the action. And the thing most people don't even touch on, because it's almost subconscious or subliminal or subwhatever, is that it replicates the way you actually view the world. Your eyes dart around a room, you may look at a detail, then look over at a group of people, then down at your shoes. That's an over-exaggeration, but the association with documentary filmmaking and the similarity to how people view things on a daily basis pulls you right into the movie.

Not everyone's into it, and the people that aren't love to be vocal about it, but as a filmmaker myself, I'd lose the 1% of my audience that doesn't get it for the 99% that have a better time and get more of my movie.

I'm not a big fan of handheld, but I do think it works particularly well in effects movies. Probably quite a bit harder to do in post but the motion-tracking really keeps the effects from standing out as unreal.

And the major thing you didn't touch on, is that Berg is one of maybe two or three working directors that can do any genre.

Dave, you forgot VERY BAD THINGS, which is fairly unpleasant but totally unapologetic in terms of how pitch-black it is.

Plus DIAZ is the HOTNESS in it. KNOW.

The only big flaw with THE KINGDOM that actually bothers me is that once the (awesome) action kicks in, it pretty much negates everything, plot-wise, that came before it. That firefight could've broken out at minute 60, 80, or 100, because from that point on, the "investigation" plot is rendered as little more than time-biding until the big finish.

They're piecing together these clues, trying to solve the crime, and WHAM!, the bad guys attack THEM, and from that point on it's a chase picture.

It's also a pretty big whopper that the whole crew just happens to end up in the mastermind's APARTMENT out of the entire building/neighborhood/floor.

Those issues aside, still... OWNS.

BOW.

To be fair, I reduced the comment to "shaky-cam."

The quote I was riffing on was, "Letting the camera move bounce while it lingers on a character doing something mundane does not mean the movie goes "to a darker place in the characters", it just means Berg thinks he's better than he actually is."

"The A-Team swings in to clean up the mess. Pure John Wayne-era stuff. But nothing is that simple with Berg."

I have read you for years and while I do not agree with you politically, I have always thought your movie history knowledge was never simplistic and cliched and very well learned.

Wayne along with directors such as Hawks and Ford made some of the most complex films to hit the screen. Rio Bravo, Red River, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Searchers etc. that I really felt the need to mention this.

Of all of cinema history's icons, Wayne's legacy is most misunderstood as most people form their views on Wayne by having seen one or two or in some cases none of his films. It is all based on stereotype. I have taught a few film classes and Wayne is the one cinema icon where students have no problem trashing him sight unseen. When his work is viewed and explained critically, a different view forms. Deep down, I am sure you know that and I am not trying to be a prick. But as a student of film history I though I would just call attention to the fact that the John Wayne analogy is not really appropriate. And if it is for some of his films, than virtually any filmmaker is guilty.

Yes he made some B & W films...but what director hasn't. Many modern films that are considered complex are some of the most B & W morally ever made.

I actually like Peter Berg a lot. I also agree that he has a little Mann in him and this is probably why they work together so well. But he will have to make a few more geniune classics before we say Berg has a more complex track record than Wayne.

Again, not trying to be a dink...just something I wanted to mention.

I will not. Kindly stop making that request.

Very Bad Things is very messy tonally. But he was finding his footing. The Rundown is the best '80s movie that came out in the...not '80s. Friday Night Lights is like "Montage: The Movie" and I mean that in the best way possible. The style and structure of that movie lended it something you'd never seen in a sports movie. And The Kingdom is the shit.

I wish Ladder 44 happened. Thanks a lot, Osama. Firefighters burning a building down as misdirection to pull off a huge heist is a recipe for awesome.

Go rent or buy SHOCKER and witness the awesome that is BERG.

I always really dug Berg as an actor, especially in A Midnight Clear. I think he's a director who brings something to the table without taking anything off it and I think he has the unique ability to make mediocre scripts into good movies. I think it's a shame, though, that he keeps choosing scripts that don't have a lot of upside to them, that have relatively low ceilings. But he is a master of tone and you can see that all the way back in Very Bad Things, which is on such a razor thin edge of comedy and tragedy and walks that tightrope for its entire running time, refusing to choose a side.

I'm curious to see what he'll do with the umpteenth version of Dune and what tone he'll use. But I'd really love to see him paired with a really great script, something akin to Heat or Collateral (if we're going with the Mann thing) and see what he would do with that.

Wonder if he gave The Shocker to Estella Warren?

Fuck shaky-cam or handheld or whatever you want to call it. It's not new. It's just cheap.

It's not cheap. It's life. It's hard to keep a cool tracking shot when you are being attacked by a monster. Trust me. I know. Nevertheless, TIH has a great sense of humour Iron Hater. You just are not down with the NEW STYLE. Four and three and two and one and David Poland is nothing more then a MARVEL HATER, son.

Life is cheap.

Movie tickets are expensive.

Show me something professional that took time to figure out and execute.

Handheld has its place. Just like the dolly, Just like the Stedicam. Just not all the time.

Anybody who thinks life looks like a handheld camera has serious cerebral suspension problems.

I thought the handheld camera in FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS was over-dramatic. It didn't look gritty like Texas. But that's me.

I wonder if Peter Berg and John Stockwell ever hang out and talk about being awesome.

What about Peter Berg, John Stockwell, and David Poland.

Nicol-

I think the only mis-clarification regarding John Wayne is that for many years, especially those leading up to Vietnam, most males thought he was right on. Then the unfairness of the U.S. government coupled with the realization that Wayne (and Ford) were the epitome of jingoism caused many people to do a Çhris Griffin sized "Whaaaaaat!?!?!" of disbelief.

John Wayne and John Ford's vision of America was destroyed in the seventies and since that point, many people remain either infatuated with Wayne (like a gross girlfriend who you know is totally wrong and your friends talk about and you want to break up with...but can't) or totally defiant of him.

There's NEVER been any confusion or misunderstanding about his films and the "rightness" of America and the single, frontiersman against the world always shines through. When you say he's "misunderstood" it smacks of you saying "John Wayne is misunderstood because many people think it's wrong to be totally faithful to yourself and country and not accept challenges to those 2 things. Well, students, that's wrong. To question those things is wrong, as Wayne said. Don't think for yourselves, kids...it leads to confusion."

John Wayne is completely accepted as an icon. If you want to talk about some icons who get trashed sight unseen, I'll go Costner and Stallone way ahead of Wayne any day.

It's been called "shakey-cam" because when it was first used in commercials 10-15 years ago the camera was intentionally being jiggled around as a way to force the viewer to keep their bewildered attention focused on the screen. It was blasted as needlessly irritating back then and hasn't gotten any better. Calling it "that's life" implies that you do nothing but watch home movies all day.

when i first saw 'blair witch project' in the cinema with a group of mainly guys back in the days of yore, one of them got the dreaded 'handheldcamera' sickness and walked out of the theatre unable to cope. it's akin to the extreme depth sickness immortalised in 'the abyss': one out of 'x' number of people just can't hack shakey-cam visuals and it makes them head to the vomitorium.

And the effect is many times worse when projected onto an eyeball-entrapping IMAX screen. Many folks in that business complained that you simply cannot put a typical fast-paced quick-cut Hollywood action flick on an IMAX screen unless you really do want to make a lot of people sick.

It helps to have a little technical knowledge when discussing these things. "Shaky cam" is a dumb term because it's not a consistent effect except when referred to as early 90's tv commercial-style. Handheld camera-work can vary from vomit-inducing to subtle, all dependent on the type of lens used, the weight of the camera, the skill of the cameraman, whether there's any support system like a steadicam used, etc. Very long lens handheld with little weighted support can be hard to watch, the worst of Tony Scott, Greengrass, etc. But the same directors use it in more subtle ways depending on the scene. Blair Witch was shot with a very small, lightweight camera and so generally looked bad on the bigscreen, vomit inducing for reasons beyond just the shakiness of it. In general, handheld camerawork is the lazy man's approach to covering a scene. It's basically saying, shoot it however each take, then we'll figure it out in post. But some use it well, so it's a technique that gets a bad rap because it's used too often and poorly.

For an excellent example of handheld that really amplifies the film, see The Insider or Miami Vice.

Wow, somehow I totally missed that Nicol comment. Nicol, I think the thing about John Wayne is that even though he made The Searchers, Rio Bravo, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, those are the exceptions that prove the rule on his resume. For every terrific Hawks or Ford movie he made, there's a The Conqueror or The Green Berets; not to mention that he allowed his offscreen persona and politics to dominate his public image (which is supposed to be the worst thing an actor can do, right?)

Whateva you want to call it, it's become one of the the most abused and overused film techniques of the past few years. I blame the TV.

Did anybody see Steven Soderbergh's Bubble? I appreciated that so much more because Soderbergh chose to film it without handheld camera, which is like Jesus for arthouse film makers.

"It's not cheap. It's life. It's hard to keep a cool tracking shot when you are being attacked by a monster. Trust me. I know."

None of that makes any sense at all. Besides, I'm sure there is a way to keep a cool tracking shot in that sort of environment. I mean, they did it for decades before the whole handheld business came into effect. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean.

Wow, this was a response to my comment. I wasn't expecting that.

Anyways, DP, I didn't mean to say that the shaky-cam(ish) issue was the only reason you liked Berg, but I'm aware it came across that way. My bad.

I brought that up because I found the whole shitload of scenes in The Kingdom in which the characters have really stupid conversations about things like the clothes they wear on the weekends (I'm thinking about the convo between Foxx and Cooper when they were on they're way to Saudi) to be unnecessary and gimmicky, both on the level of camera work and script. The Kingdom and Friday Night Lights were very different movies, it probably wasn't a good idea to use the same techniques on both.

These scenes are there to develop the characters, but a good script would be able to develop the characters with better dialogue and move the story forward. The technique Berg uses is slightly unconventional, and I thought it worked (a long time ago) in Friday Night Lights where the characters and events really were mundane, but in The Kingdom, where the characters and events are anything but mundane, it seemed really pretentious.

For what it's worth, I loved The Rundown and FNL when they came out. I doubt I would appreciate FNL as much if I saw it now, partially because I have refined my tastes and partially because I would probably realize how gimmicky the whole technique of letting the "shakey-cam" linger on the characters to "develop" them is.

As for Hancock, I'll see it, but I'm not looking forward to it. Not so much because of Berg, but because I hate compromised visions and movies made by committee. And whoever thinks the full R-Rated cut will be on DVD is probably wrong. It looks like they were compromising on this from the beginning.

As for Berg, I think he has potential, but he has to stop with the gimmicky scripts and camera work.

OK, that thing they do during the action scenes in Bourne, where they carefully choreograph scenes, then move the camera so violently that YOU CANNOT SEE THE SCENE? Call it what you want, give it a technical name, but it's horrible.

Yes, it appears they're intentionally shaking the camera so you cannot see what's happening on screen. Shakey Cam is as good as a term as I've heard. It's terrible no matter what term you use.

RE: SHAKEY-CAM

There actually is an "extreme Shakey-Cam" technique that Tony Scott used in the excreable DOMINO that involves putting the motor of a Makita handdrill against the camera body to create excess vibration.

Hand-held has its place and can be wonderful. It's a very fine line. Greengrass, who comes from docs, "gets it." For the less skilled, it feels too much like over-mannered affect or playing dress-up -- sudden zooms or tilts to hands for no reason, for instance, then back, in the same shot. Think of a typical courtroom scene in BOSTON LEGAL. It's a sort of faux grit -- adopt the trappings of indie cinema (devoid of context, of course) and you can be "cutting edge" too! -- like the way Avril Lavigne and Ashley Simpson were first marketed as "punk" to tweens who didn't know better.

The bigger problem with so-called "shakey cam" is the advent of digital editing. What "reads" on a TV monitor doesn't necessarily "read" projected 60 ft high. Seems like a no-brainer, but people forget this. Not just jittery hand-held, but ultra-quick cutting and the recent annoying vogue for extreme-extreme insert closeups of eyes and such (in the Suzanne Bier mode, not Sergio Leone style). The fact that it's accepted belies the fact that most of these films are viewed on DVD anyway, not in a theatre.

Now, if you really wanna get me started on the worst faux-grit trend out there today (and Berg, tonally gifted but visually still a poseur, is a big adherent of this) it's bad digital intermediate. It's everywhere and it looks like shit when used by the 99% of filmmakers who don't have Roger Deakins in the room with them during the timing session. But that's for another thread....

whatever you say, vicuna, but that drill motor thing just sounds retarded. if i want that much vibration i'll go stand by a jackhammer, that's always a good time

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: