Erik

I must confess that I've never really been a fan of James Bond. My dad was though so I have watched a good number of them.

Maybe I couldn't get over the accent but no matter how innovative he is I just can't seem to get into it. The most interesting part to me was the silhouette entrance themes particularly with the female form involved, cinematography-speaking of course... :-)




Daniel Craig certainly has the least charisma of any Bond IMO. God I hope they replace him soon.

Quantum of Solace comes out on Friday so I might go see it just for old times' sake.

One of my favorite shows on TV is Prison Break. The cinematography is top-notch on this show especially during the first few seasons when it was filmed primarily in a prison near Chicago. Really dark twisted shit but at the same time has a slight sense of humor to it. Most of this stuff implied but still quite gruesome like when T-Bag killed and ate his border crossing cohort in the Arizona desert just to survive.

The car chase scenes on Prison Break really got me to thinking about all of those cut scenes and cameras bouncing around, it really creates a great sense of urgency. The diversity of the show is what sets it apart though in my opinion. The dark and emotional scenes are done convincingly in addition to the action scenes of course.

I've only watched one movie before that featured Robert Knepper aka. T-bag so I'm interested to see how he performs in Transporter 3.

I'm thinking about seeing Twilight in two weeks when it comes out on the 21st. If you saw my previous LJ post, it plays into my "interests". :-)

There definitely seems to be a lot of atmospheric cinematography that I always appreciate.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching the shows on the WB. In particular, I like to watch 90210 and One Tree Hill. I know, laugh all you want, a 30 year old guy from L.A. likes to watch the teen dramas. How I got into those shows though was because I tend to  have a little bit of a crush on goth chicks. I started watching One Tree Hill a few years ago because my teenaged brother was a fan of OTH so I happened to catch an episode where Peyton aka. Hilarie Burton was dressed up for Halloween as the grim reaper. It fit her character too since she was tortured soul for the most part. I’ve been hooked since. Last month the same thing happened when “Silver” from 90210 caught my eye. Her character was very similar to Peyton’s in that she had dyed black hair and had an interest in the darker side of culture.

 

When I looked up pictures of Hilarie Burton and Jessica Stroup (Silver), I wasn’t surprised by how skinny they looked in real life. You know the whole cliché about how video cameras make you look 15 pounds heavier well it is true. Lenses don’t see things the way that the human eye does. With a wide angled perspective up close it can make someone look a lot bigger and more imposing than what they normally look like. The same if a telephoto is used. Naturally dialogue scenes are probably going to be close-crop monologues or cut-scene dialogues so the camera angle has to be up close to connect with the audience. By doing that however, it makes people and objects look bigger than they would in real life due to perspective distortion.

 

So really, you might wonder why all the actresses and actors are so small in real life. Well it’s because that’s what “normal” in real life looks like on the screen. Arnold Schwarzenegger on the other hand went from Mr. Olympia to Conan the Barbarian!

I know that movies like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls aren't supposed to be taken seriously but I still can't get over how many details we skipped over. I mean look at Shia LaBeouf's hair. It never moves no matter how crazy of a scene he is involved with, his hair looks as if he is just sitting inside of a library. Cmon Mr. Spielberg. Are you still the same director that filmed Schindler's List  and Saving Private Ryan? Or did money make you complacent?

Don't get me wrong. Indiana Jones 4 was entertaining but the attention to detail was way too sloppy.

If you follow MMA of any sorts, you probably know that a couple Saturdays ago, Kimbo Slice got his ass kicked on prime-time TV in just 15 seconds. If not, here it is. The guy is a classic case of Internet hype not living up to real life expectations.



Not only did the ball drop on his career, his fighting organization Elite XC went out of business the other day. Epic failure for sure. But wait. I don't think he is the worst thing in mixed martial arts to be broadcast on a major network. That honor should go to the IFL. (Which also went out of business not too long ago.)

Maybe nobody watched it or whatever, but the first few shows that IFL put on channel 13 here in L.A., had such poor production value that it looked like something your older brother could have put together on a shoe-string budget. I didn't bother looking for clips from those episodes on YouTube. I'll spare you the punishment. But it did get me to thinking about MMA fighters who have been actors in high-production value movies. Here are two that I can think of from the top of my head:

Oleg Taktarov (Early UFC veteran) -  Righteous Kill, Miami Vice, Bad Boys II

Randy Couture (Former UFC champion) - Scorpion King 2

So I finally got around to watching Indiana Jones 4 this past weekend and couldn't get past how contrived some of the scenes were. Near the beginning when they were in the warehouse, to see a 60-something year old Harrison Ford climbing effortlessly up a stack of crates or swinging from cables like he somehow forgot that this isn't 1977 anymore. Don't get me wrong, Harrison Ford is an actor that I respect a lot but the onus should be on Spielberg to stop relying on sleight-of-hand camera angle gimmicks.