Day #26 of the 30 Day Film Challenge

[shadowkat]

Day #26 of 30 Day Film Challenge

The prompt is A film that is visually striking to you - and you haven't already picked in a prior category, or was picked by me in the category before this one. (Not that I think anyone is going to pick Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Akban).

Err...I don't know. I'm drawing a blank. Visually striking films? I thought Gone with the Wind was a visually striking film, but I have "issues" with the film, so don't want to pick it..

Watch on YouTube

Say what you will about the above film - it is visually striking, one of those films you kind of have to see on a huge screen.

Comments

[cactuswatcher]

I'm going to pick TRON (1982)

It was interesting to watch at the time partly because the world of computer graphics was changing so fast that it represented a moment in time that was already past on high end computers. Still very striking and unique because no movie was ever made to look like that again. It probably had more computer generated graphics than any movie before it. It was not up to what was available even on home computers in very few years. Quite impressive visually then even so. It was not such a great story.

In the computer section there were limited colors on a black background reflecting late 1970s arcade game graphics. Actors in "the computer" wore weird costume suits, that have morphed into today's live action recording suits.

Warning: the "remastered" version is very different from the original. Cartoonish vivid colors instead of the original's more grey-scale like muted ones.

The original trailer... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtyHX7z8fi8

[cjlasky7]

I loved Tron--and I even enjoyed Tron: Legacy. Lisberger has supposedly been working on the capper to the trilogy, and who knows? If Mad Max can come back, why not Tron?

[shadowkat]

I remember seeing Tron in the theater - it was the Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner's film. I rather liked the first film, innovative and at the start of the tech explosion.
Now it's kind of dated...but it was brilliant back then.

[cactuswatcher]

It was funny, I did not know who Bruce Boxleitner was then and it took some time for me to associate the character Tron with the guy talking with Jeff Bridges at the start of the film. I wasn't very observant. ;o)

I enjoyed watching it then, too.

[shadowkat]

I didn't notice or connect the two either - until I saw the trailer. (Or I did not remember it.) But I did know who he was - Western fan, remember? Boxleitner starred in "How the West Was Won" in the 70s with James Arness.

[cactuswatcher]

I never saw any of that mini-series. Looking at his Wiki page he was in things I saw, but really never knew who he was till The Scarecrow and Mrs. King after Tron.

[petzipellepingo]

I'm picking two films, the first one is Kingdom of Heaven and the second one is If... . The first is visually beautiful and the second is interesting as it moves from color to black and white and back and forth.

[shadowkat]

Kingdom of Heaven's trailer is beautiful - is that the one about the Crusades that Ridely Scott did? Orlando Bloom is very pretty in the trailer.

If... I've seen. That movie is kind of headache inducing. It was before A Clockwork Orange - and the reason Malcolm McDowell got the role in Kubrick's film. I like Clockwork Orange better, If...I can't remember for some reason.

But I'll have to check out Kingdom of Heaven.

[petzipellepingo]

Yes, Kingdom of Heaven is by Ridley Scott and curiously was originally supposed to star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[shadowkat]

I'm guessing Liam Neeson took the Schwarzenegger role? Because I can't see him in the Orlando Bloom part. Didn't it get horrible reviews? Because it kind of came and went pretty quickly. I vaguely remember it coming out, and dying at the box office. But that doesn't mean it was bad - a lot of films did that.

[petzipellepingo]

The film was a box office disappointment in the US and Canada, earning $47.4 million against a budget of around $130 million, but did better in Europe and the rest of the world, earning $164.3 million, with the worldwide box office earnings totalling at $211,643,158.[41] It was also a big success in Arabic-speaking countries, especially Egypt.

[shadowkat]

Interesting that it was a big success in Arabic-speaking countries, such as Egypt.

Did it show the Arabic/Egyptians in a better light than the Europeans? I'm wondering if it did? That would explain it.

[petzipellepingo]

Yes, I think you could say that. They come across as honorable people.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, that's the reason it did better over there than here.

[cjlasky7]

I'm going to go with two films spotlighting French animation, each with a distinctive design:

The Triplets of Belleville (2003), directed by Sylvain Chomet, has already been mentioned in this challenge--but Chomet's wildly cartoonish/ borderline grotesque character designs and cityscapes deserve all the attention they can get:

https://youtu.be/Ma57kSzKIoE

A generation earlier, Rene Laloux's Fantastic Planet (1973) paved the way for European adult scifi in movies and comics (like Metal Hurlant, the predecessor to America's Heavy Metal magazine).

https://youtu.be/IscoJBAv4vs

[shadowkat]

What's this with people picking two films? LOL! (OMN admittedly started the trend, I decided he just can't make up his mind, now you and petz are following...)

I rather adore Triplets of Belleville.

[cjlasky7]

Hey, it was a "theme"!

(I couldn't choose, okay?)

[shadowkat]

Personally I'd have gone with Triplets. But considering I didn't know the other one existed - thanks for bringing it to my attention. This is kind of a rec post in a weird way.

[cjlasky7]

In terms of pure entertainment value? Triplets is better, livelier, funnier. Fantastic Planet is too strange, moves too slowly to ever be as entertaining.

But FP, in its own, weird way, was vastly more influential. Laloux was the animation end of the "Metal Hurlant" movement in France--and in other films, he collaborated with like minded illustrators like Moebius.

Granted, when Heavy Metal hit the US, it came to be defined as "big boobed babes with swords." But the visual aesthetic of those original artists has bled through into the best of modern cinema. Ridley Scott's production design for both Alien and Blade Runner leaned heavily into the Metal Hurlant aesthetic, and more fanatical devotees of the art than me could probably point out dozens of examples.

So do check out FP. You might not enjoy it, but I think you'll find it interesting.

[shadowkat]

Hmmm...maybe someday. Right now? I need fluff. Anything that requires intellectual thought - ain't happening.

[atpo_onm]

In my defense, I did state that I may have picked one film previously for another prompt, but couldn't be sure. You need keep in mind that I am at that age where several times a day I leave one room to go to another to get or do something, get to that room, and have no idea as to what the getting and/or doing was.

[shadowkat]

You also like to pick more than one item for each of these prompts. LOL

[atpo_onm]

Ahh, another prompt where depending on how one defines "visually striking", it can become a matter of choosing one film from among dozens of possibilities. In my case especially, being a photographer, I always partly process any film I see in visual terms, regardless of the story content.

So, I'm settling on a film that I saw in the theater back in 1980, along with my best friend at the time, and we were both pretty much blown away by it. Even today, 40 years later, it still impresses me for its overall thematic and visual audacity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67lYG7a4YOA

But then... it is a Ken Russell flick. So... you could pick almost any of his works, and it would fit the prompt. A(n) (in)famous film he released in 1971 was the first X-rated film I saw playing in an actual movie theater. (The "NC-17" classification was still many years away).