Miscellaneous Movie Musings

[tracilicious]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

I'd also like to hear you address the huge problems the movie had with its storytelling. We can stray from product placement for a moment.

What is the moral of the story? Love doesn't last? Love doesn't wait for you? There are worse things than being stuck on an island, you could find out that the love of your life forgot you and got married to someone else?
What great messages!

I really love Cast Away. I won't address product placement (though for me it was very necessary in this story), but I will address the above.

I don't think a story necessarily needs a moral, but for me Cast Away's moral is triumph of the human spirit. He clings to hope by not opening the angel wings package, he creates comradery with an ordinary object to help him survive the constant isolation, he takes his one chance at freedom from the island with bravery and adventure, then in the end even when all seems lost he delivers his package and journeys into the unknown. Life really sucks sometimes but it doesn't end. Even when the most crippling of blows are dealt the indefeatable human spirit survives. He takes his map and goes off to find out what else life has to offer. You don't get a better ending than that, IMO.

I will say though, that one thing really annoyed me about Cast Away. He's gone for four years, in that time she marries and has a two or three year old child. So basically, she would have married within the year he died and got pregnant right away. It seemed a bit rushed to me in that respect. One of my favorite movies ever though, for precisely the reasons iSm described in his original post.

[innerSpaceman]

United 93 was about as non-political, non-patriotic as you can get. It was a thrilling, true-life, uber-danger adventure told in real time ... amazingly without jingoism or cheerleading or condemnation.

I think the hijackers were shown to be confused, bad men. But there was no judgment on Islam. The military was shown to be hamstrung and incompetent, but they somehow resisted putting the blame on anyone militarily or politically. (Though I don't see how any reasonable person could not have pictured George Bush sitting in a classroom as the military guys in the movie scrambled in vain to get the presidential authority needed to shoot down civilian aircraft).

As for too soon .... well, this movie played almost like a docudrama. And it was unique for having just about every character who lived through the day played in the movie by the actual person who was that character. This lent a credence to this movie that could never have been achieved otherwise ... and is certainly a good reason for producing the film close in time to the actual events portrayed.



And now, to go back on my word, I will say one more thing about Cast Away...

Originally Posted by tracilicious

I don't think a story necessarily needs a moral, but for me Cast Away's moral is triumph of the human spirit.

Another very good moral of the story is personal responsibility. Early in the film, Hanks is shown shying away from any emotional connection to his best friend vis-a-vis the pal's wife's battle with cancer. Upon return from a major survival experience four years later, a changed man, Hanks apologizes to his friend for not being there for him when his wife died. Hanks then apologizes to his remarried girlfriend for being absent for four years. He does not play the victim, but rather accepts personal responsibility for the events of his life and their oft-tragic consequences. He has grown as a man, and his exceptional level of personal responsibility is an uplifting inspiration.



I'll stop gushing about this film now. But the fact that mousepod has bumped it up his Netflix queue makes it all worthwhile, tee hee.

[innerSpaceman]

Yes, your point seems to be that showing the real world as it is, chock full of logos everywhere, is a bother to you. That's fine.

Many other people, me included, say it conveys a sense of reality, and can serve as a shorthand of visual communication which is appropriate for a visual art form. Round and round, and this is where I get off.

I'm not gonna top my post about The Louvre. I wish I could have kept the light touch, and I apologize for getting touchy. But The DaVinci Code could have used a lot less talk. I'm really glad they didn't bother to take even four lines to explain some made-up museum with the great art works of history and a painting that was somehow the most famous work of art on an entire planet.

I'm just gonna leave it at that, and hope the thread veers back to musing about other movies. I have no intentions of singing any more praises about freaking Cast Away. The tangent about product placement vs. filmic reality was very interesting. I've got nothing more to say about either subject.


Hopefully, some people will be curious enough about the FedEx controversy to screen Cast Away, and they'll either love it or hate it.

[scaeagles]

I liked Cast Away.

Reality in a movie is not necessary to me. If it were, I'd not watch any movies. However, the more a movie seems realistic or plausible to me, the more I typically like it. Batman Begins is my favorite superhero type movie because, as far as superhero movies go, it was plausible that someone could really be Batman. Superman, Spiderman....they all take some incredible premise to build their movies.

[Gemini Cricket]

I think the 'Da Vinci Code' was a tad too talky myself. The pacing of the book was much faster than the pacing of the movie. (I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but that's what it felt like anyway.)

I'm bummed that I read 'DVC' after the trip we took to Scotland, London and Paris. It was a coincidence that the places were the same...

[mousepod]

Man... I came into this thread waaaay too late. I was gonna talk about how I just watched the Hammer flick "Rasputin, the Mad Monk" starring Christopher Lee in the title role.

Anyway, now that we're talking about product placement, I'm surprised that nobody mentioned Zemeckis' mentor, Spielberg. Minority Report is quite possibly the most shameless example of product placement I've ever seen in a movie.

As far as Castaway is concerned, I would have chosen FedEx, too, if only for their super-cool logo. Once someone pointed out the subliminal arrow in the name, I can't look at the logo and not see it. Keen.

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by mousepod

Minority Report is quite possibly the most shameless example of product placement I've ever seen in a movie.

Totally. Although, despite that, I liked 'Minority Report'.

The worst was Taco Bell in 'Demolition Man'. And all those ads in 'Fantastic Four'.

[Prudence]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

The worst was Taco Bell in 'Demolition Man'.

Actually, I thought that was pretty funny. Taco Bell is so craptacular - I can't think of a chain lower down on the quality scale. I'm sure they paid for their mention, but I took it as more of a dig against them - the irony that the worst fast food chain ever would win the restaurant wars. It fit in with the idea that ad jingles rise to top 40 status. I don't think it's funny unless you know how awful the source material is.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by Prudence

Actually, I thought that was pretty funny. Taco Bell is so craptacular - I can't think of a chain lower down on the quality scale. I'm sure they paid for their mention, but I took it as more of a dig against them - the irony that the worst fast food chain ever would win the restaurant wars. It fit in with the idea that ad jingles rise to top 40 status. I don't think it's funny unless you know how awful the source material is.

Definitely agree with this - the joke was "Everyone knows Taco Bell sucks, how did they win the fast food wars?" That wouldn't have been communicated with Brand X.

I kinda wanted to see United 93 but I knew I'd never drag GD with me. Same goes for CastAway and King Kong, actually...

We added CastAway to our Netflix list and bumped it.

[Ghoulish Delight]

The product placement was the least of my problems with Minority Report. Writing, acting, directing, and cinematography all trumped it.

For the record, the logo was designed in 1994.

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000273.php