Movies you just recently watched

[Indy]

I went watching Life of Pi in the cinema of our town. An excellent movie, good story, and worth a positive critique.

[Adsolution]

Ah yes, I saw that a month or two ago. Excellent movie indeed, the art design was brilliant.

[Keane]

Saw The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Surprisingly, the movie received no more than average reviews. I thought it was rather great and done well. The story is creative, almost the entire cast is interesting & developed, and it did a lot of things from dark to physical humour. OK, the movie had a lot of things that would with no doubt be impossible, but with the idea of "magic" I think you should be allowed to be a bit over the top. It's been a while since I've seen an audience laugh nearly non-stop, including myself, so screw them. I loved it.

[Haruka]

I saw on the Oscars that the Life of Pi also won oscars for special effects, it must be pretty cool to watch.

[Indy]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

[Keane]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

2012 was not a good movie.

[Spanex]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

2012 was not a good movie.

The special effects gave me chills though.

[Adsolution]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

2012 was not a good movie.

And that of course has everything to do with the producer.

[Haruka]

I remind watching 2012, I think they kinda exagerated with the flood thing.

[Indy]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

2012 was not a good movie.

Yeah, and the people who were believing in the 21-12-2012 apolcalypse made 2009-2012 a bad year for me.

[spiraldoor]

Yes it is! Go grab your chance if you want to watch it. It's awesome, and if I'm not mistaken, one of the producers who made the movie also produced 2012.

Producers are in charge of how films projects are developed, financed and organised, but they generally don't have much to do with the creative side of filmmaking. You're better off looking up the screenwriters and directors of your favourite films and checking out their other work – that's where you'll find films that really have similar artistic sensibilities and other interesting parallels.

[Bradandez]

Recently watched Oz, The Great and Powerful. It's a decent/good movie. I absolutely loved the visuals and effects, the story was interesting most of the time but I kind of thought some of the acting was a bit odd/ a bit off. Though in the end I really enjoyed the film.

[Minor-T5]

Just saw The Hobbit yesterday. I actually thought it was better than the older Lord Of The Rings movies. Can't wait for part 2.

[Adsolution]

Hm, I still see that movie as something awful. A visionary mess of horrid pacing and disgustingly bad CGI.

[GNineify]

I have 3 free movie tickets and I have no idea what to watch. I need to use 'em before they expire! What to watch, what to watch... goddammit, I'm always way too picky with movies and that leads to nowhere.

[Minor-T5]

Hm, I still see that movie as something awful. A visionary mess of horrid pacing and disgustingly bad CGI.

The Hobbit had bad CGI? I actually thought the CGI was great.

[stan423321]

Quality of CGI is one of most subjective qualities there. Recently, one TV station emitted Avatar, and you have no idea what a flamewar began in my home town regarding quality of its CGI.

[Adsolution]

Subjective? I'd argue it's actually on of the most objective things around. The fluidity, physical simulation and detail of the animations, as well as the lighting and shading quality are really all on the same linear scale of unrealistic to realistic. There's no subjectivity involved when it comes to analysing physical properties and how they should react to the world around them.

Most of the worst CGI in The Hobbit took place in the cavern. The trolls, and the giant orc itself looked like they were rendered with the quality of a real-time engine, or maybe CGI from over a decade ago. Sure they were eye-catching and had all these different physically simulated points of interested, but they looked incredibly fake. I could even argue that Gollum looked better in The Two Towers than he did here, largely due to the fact that the artistic vision of the movie was a complete mess. Gollum's skin looked like a toothpick could rip it, and the shading looked more suitable for a cartoon than it did a live-action film.

I think identifying good or bad CGI is simply being able to distinguish what something that is real actually looks like, or how something unrealistic should look if it were real. Many people are used to the more crummy, eye-popping CGI. Hint: CGI is not good if it does not come off as natural. The original Lord of the Rings trilogy understood this and rendered their work in a much more filmic way to mask this, making it look very believable, and it gave the films a very solid tone. The Hobbit looks like it used fresh, completely unfiltered renders with as many fancy effects, sparkles and intricacies as possible. Sure, it took a hell of a lot of time to render, but that's not what things in real life look like.

- Cut the arguments that fantastical glossiness and light rays through the clouds aren't realistic, because that's simply an art direction. As members of this Universe, we at least expect something as mathematical and calculated as character animations to simulate believably, which they don't at all in The Hobbit.

I'll give Avatar credit that while it's easily distinguishable from reality, nearly the entire world was CGI, allowing it to get away with this. That and the fact that Avatar had some of the best motion-capture I've ever seen.

Sorry for any lazy grammar, I'm typing on my phone.

[stan423321]

So you claim that good CGI is realistic CGI? Couldn't disagree more about this in general.

[Adsolution]

I meant that good CGI is believable CGI. I'm more applying this statement to live-action films with CGI pasted on top, as is the case with The Hobbit. Also, considering that this is a live-action movie, it should come across as at least somewhat realistic, no?