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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Master and Commander
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 11-13-2003 05:41 AM
For the search engine: Master & Commander
This review is going to be split into two parts. First, the technical and second the content.
TECHNICAL - this movie just sucks visually and audibly. The only thing this flick has going for it is that it is a scope film. However it certainly wasn't shot anamorphic, as the image looks dirty, bland and blurry. Deluxe's CRAP code and negative dirt certainly didn't help things either. But you know what, nothing and I do mean nothing, comes close to just how shitty of a job they did with the sound mix on this film. I screened it in an auditorium that sounds fantastic on anything I throw in there. The fader runs between 6.5 to 7.5 on every film. For this movie, even turning it down to 5.0 was still too loud! It wasn't even such that it was so loud, but it was so harsh and rough. This is a great example of "Ear Fatigue 101". The loud scenes are loud, and that's it. (Do take note the dialogue scenes are recorded low to force you not to turn it down too much.) There is no quality or art to the mix. When it is quiet it is fine, when it is loud, it is a BAD loud.
I give technical 1/2 star out of 5
CONTENT - yawn, boring, does anyone care who lives or dies, zzzzzzzz, someone wake me up when it's over! This movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes, but if I wasn't clocking the run time, I would've guessed it was somewhere between 5 to 6 hours long. This thing just dragged and dragged, then went off into tangents, then dragged some more. Every once in a while, something will happen to perk the interest, but it's rare. Now in all fairness, had their been sound that was somewhat acceptable, I may have enjoyed the content part of this film more, but as I write this I have a pounding headache from the sound.
I give content 1 star out of 5
Watch how fast this movie DIES!
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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003
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posted 11-13-2003 12:20 PM
I ended up enjoying the movie. I was quite intrigued by the story and the adventure of finding the French ship. I liked that they didn't give us nonstop action with no story. I do agree that the picture was bad. This was a film that should have been shot anamorphic and it clearly wasn't. The image was just too dirty and too grainy for my taste. Maybe it will look a little nicer once we put it in a smaller house. As for the sound, I felt this to be one of the most agressive and active mixes I've heard in a long time. Sure, at times it gets VERY loud but I felt it was a good loud, not an ear shattering loud. The cool thing about this mix was the use of every single channel. No matter what part of the film it is, the surrounds do not stop. You hear the ship creaking, footsteps running from left to right surround, and even cannon balls flying from the back. We aren't setup for ES (we screened it in DTS) but it sure sounded like there was a sixth channel back there. But most importantly, I enjoyed this mix because it really puts you on the ship with all of those sailors. The audience is not just watching their adventure, but we are a part of it.
In the end, this movie will not be everyone's cup of tea but it is worth checking out. I think the reason I enjoyed it so much was that it was something different than the usual garbage Hollywood puts out. It was a nice shift of pace and setting to put me on a 19th century English battleship that is chasing a French ship. Yes, I said put me on that ship because this sound mix does literally put you inside that ship.
AJG
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Jason Black
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1723
From: Myrtle Beach, SC, USA
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted 11-13-2003 11:59 PM
I was surprised, to say the least. While I had no real interest to see the film, other than to see how well it lived up to my bad expectations, I was actually impressed.
Yes, the sound issue pestered the shit out of me, yes, I noticed it was grainy (in places), but it did, like Aaron said, bring me aboard the ship. The storm scene made me drift back to The Perfect Storm, but, I overlooked that. It did seem to drag on in places, bust so have most other movies on screen this year...
Overall, out of 4 ****, I give it 2.
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Bob Maar
(Maar stands for Maartini)
Posts: 28608
From: New York City & Newport, RI
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 11-14-2003 09:55 AM
The Providence Journal gave Master and Commander it's Highest rating of four Stars.
http://www.projo.com
The New York Post gave it three and a half stars.
http://www.nypost.com
Trivia: The ship used in the film was built and is moored here in Newport, RI.
Surprise! Master and Commander ship is actually Tall Ship Rose
BY MARY GRADY
Special to the Journal
While watching Master and Commander this weekend, Rhode Islanders might notice something familiar about the H.M.S. Surprise, the stout ship sailed by Capt. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe).
Those tall masts with their fighting tops, the bulging sides full of cannon ports, the high, jaunty angle of the bowsprit . . . that is not some phony Hollywood computer graphic, but the actual Tall Ship Rose, born and bred in Newport.
Thousands of Rhode Islanders have toured the Rose's tarred wooden decks, cruised beneath those square white sails on a breezy summer day, climbed the rigging, and covered their ears when the cannons boomed.
Richard Bailey, a native Rhode Islander and captain of the Rose, recalls meeting filmmaker Peter Weir in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 2000. "Peter had been to Europe to see some other ships, but I told him why each and every one of them was wrong," Bailey recalls. "The Rose was the only ship that was right for the movie. It has the frigate's flared sides, called tumble-home, so when ships lay alongside each other in battle the cannons can still function. None of the other ships had that."
Weir was so taken with the Rose that he stayed for three days. By the time he left, he was convinced the Rose was born for the role of Surprise.
The studio bought the ship for $1.5 million, and asked Bailey to stay on as captain.
Bailey had worked with the Rose since the early 1970s, shortly after it arrived in Newport. The ship, built by local historian John Millar to celebrate the nation's bicentennial, had sat idle at the Newport waterfront for years, trying to survive as a dockside attraction.
In 1992, it was reborn as a nonprofit sail-training vessel, based in Bridgeport, Conn. Bailey sailed the ship to Newfoundland, the Great Lakes, the Caribbean, even to Europe, and often visited Rhode Island waters.
Volunteer sailors and paid crew of all ages, from all walks of life, with nothing in common except a love of ships and the sea, swabbed decks and furled sails and stood midnight watch together.
The first stop for the Rose as it began its voyage to Hollywood was a Newport shipyard. The ship was hoisted into drydock, torn apart, and rebuilt from stem to stern. New engines were installed, with double the horsepower. The decks and details of the rigging were redesigned to match Surprise as described in Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels, the basis of Weir's movie.
"Peter is very, very meticulous about the historical details," Bailey said. "He wanted to make a richly detailed film -- and he did."
By January 2002, the major work was done, and the crew of the Rose launched from Newport on a cold winter day.
"Two days out from Newport, we ran into the worst storm the Rose has ever sailed in," Bailey said. "Winds were up to 78 knots. We got beat up, we got wet. But we were fine."
The ship sailed for 39 days, past Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast to San Diego.
After more refitting there, ship and crew sailed south to Ensenada, in Baja, Mexico, to the same movie set where Titanic was shot.
"There are actually three ships that are the Surprise in the movie," says Bailey. "There was a full-scale replica built in a tank, on a gimbal so it could roll and pitch just like a ship at sea. It has a full rig and is identical to the Rose, except the rig is really only about two-thirds of the full height.
"There was a 40-foot-long model that was built in New Zealand. And there was the actual full-size Rose. So, when you see a helicopter shot of the ship sailing, that is definitely the Rose. But the rest of the shots, unless you looked at each one frame by frame, there is no way to tell really which is which."
Bailey sailed the Rose in the Pacific waters off the coast of Mexico for the film. He spent about a week teaching the actors how to look like sailors, and another two or three weeks of sailing for the cameras.
"A lot of people got seasick, but Russell Crowe never did, and he's very proud of that," said Bailey.
Most of the battle scenes were shot in the tank, Bailey said, so no damage was done to the actual ship. Some of the extras in the film are the ship's crew trained to look like actors, and others are actors trained to look like sailors.
For the scenes of sailing off Cape Horn, a film crew shot actual footage of the storm-tossed sea on location, and the ship later was inserted into those waves by digital magic.
So, now that the movie is out, what is next for the Rose?
Bailey would like to see the ship return to its former sail-training mission, based in Newport, open for anyone to come aboard and experience the wind and sea as Aubrey and his crew knew them. However, Michael Shanahan, a spokesman for the Maritime Museum of San Diego, confirmed last week that his museum is negotiating with 20th Century Fox to provide a dock for the Rose.
"The studio would retain ownership, but it might be kept here," said Shanahan. "We might have some news soon, but nothing has been finalized yet."
Mary Grady is a former Providence Journal section editor who has led school groups on sailing adventures aboard the Rose and written about the experience.
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 11-16-2003 05:15 AM
Another great movie from Peter Weir. Enormous attention to historical detail, from the daily workings of the ship to smallest detail like the gut strings on the instruments (instead of steel) or the way Crowe holds his violin (supported on the chest rather than on the shoulder).
Great portions of the film were obviously shot with little artificial light, that explains some of the haziness of the film, perfectly apt for a ship sailing through fog and storm, although some viewers probably would have preferred the usual sail-against-deep-red-sunset shots.
Great sound, too. The very sparingly use of music makes the musical scenes (with tastefully chosen music by Bach and Vaughan Williams), the general quietness the battle scenes all the more effective. Though the guns are really loud, there is a lot of sonical detail going on during the battle scenes. You can hear exactly from which direction the gun shots come, you hear the creaking of the ship and the fighting sounds, the splinters fly across the room. I also liked the use of the surrounds during the quiet scenes, adding a lot to the athmosphere of being on a rolling, creaking sailing ship.
Weir does not simply show us heroic men sailing from one adventure to the next, he explores their characters, their motivations and shortcomings. The 2 leading characters are men at the beginning of the 19th century - a century of many discoveries and innovations, and those characters reflect many aspects of the culture and the prevailing themes of that era.
The movie also intelligently sums up the French-British naval struggle of that time. While the French had indeed technically more advanced ships than the British, they were outwitted many times by superior seamanship. Not only did the French fail to invade England, but the outcome of this conflict established the British Navy as the superior naval power throughout the century.
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Geoffrey Weiss
Film Handler
Posts: 68
From: Lexington, KY, USA
Registered: May 2001
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posted 11-16-2003 06:05 PM
I saw the film at the Colony in Raleigh, NC. The automation kicked the lights and slide show on at the end of the trailers, so we missed the first five minutes. I'm glad I'd read the books, which I love.
This theatre has no surround, but I'm anxious now to see it in a surround auditorium to judge the mix for myself. Maybe the CRAP code wouldn't have been so egregious had it not been printed squarely at the visual focus of the shot. ARRRRRRGH!
M & C is a thinking man's action movie--not that any of you who didn't like it aren't thinking men because you certainly are, but I'm an academic geek, so I loved the stop at the Galapagos Islands. The details like the gut strings and the transformation of the captain's cabin during an engagement brought the history I'd read about in the books to life.
It's very talky, but what would we expect from the director of "The Last Wave" et. al. For me, the delight of the movie is the deliberate (very slow by modern standards) pacing that mimics 18th century life. It sometimes took hours for ships in sight of each other to engage, as the scene shows where the Surprise flees the Acheron until the coming of dark.
And the dinner scenes are well-done ensemble pieces where each actor gets to flesh out his character.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the score. I really liked the use of period music for the most part. It was a gutsy choice in the age of "A Knight's Tale."
Not a swashbuckler (a genre I also love) but an excellent historical film.
It will sink like a stone and Weir will probably never work again, given how much money they spent!
Geoff Weiss
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