The University of California’s School of Cinema-Television celebrating 75 years in 2004. USC is the oldest film school in the US and I started to think about the movies that they might have been studying for techniques, effects, etc way back then.
Which led me to ask: “What one movie from 2004 would be the best to send back in time for them to see?” Something to show how far film has developed in those 75 years.
I’ve thought that one factor that’d be part of my decision would be technology including CGI technology and its combination with live action. Movies like “Immortel (ad vitem)” or “Sky Captain” had the beautiful CGI graphics but the film itself fell short as a complete package. I really enjoyed the story and acting in “Garden State” but it wasn’t too innovative for film. “Kill Bill Vol. 2” doesn’t stand alone with Vol. 1.
My decision would be “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. The acting was good, the story was good, the cinematography was good, and the special effects were good. It wasn’t the best movie out there but it was exemplary of the advancements in film in the last 75 years and the picks from 2004 haven’t been that stunning with the combination of all of those. (YMMV)
Plan 9 From Outer Space and tell them it is considered the pinnacle of film-making. I can imagine what this would do to films today - there would be double actors who look nothing alike and strings everywhere .
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The overall best movie of the year. Great acting, script, direction, and special effects that aided in telling the story, rather than overshadowing the story. A wonderful romantic comedy-drama with sci-fi overtones. I can’t say enough great things about it.
Send them a copy of Revenge of the Sith. Then they’ll see just how little has been accomplished in 75 years by film schoool grads, change their majors to something useful, and save the world from their pretentious claptrap!
What’s sad is that so many of the big movies today seem like special effects delivery vehicles. Sequences of special effects strung together. Big budget video games. This we consider our big advance in moviemaking? We have regressed to the appetites of adolescents.
I don’t think there’s a special effects shot in Earth (1930), City Lights (1931), Our Daily Bread (1934), Grand Illusion (1938), The Rules of the Game (1939), or The Grapes of Wrath (1940). But can you think of any movie made in the last ten years that has surpassed the humanity of those pictures?
Poor argument. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, The Crowd and L’Atalante were filled with effects shots. Can you think of any films in the last ten years that have surpassed their humanity? Not to mention Kikujiro, Elephant, Punch Drunk Love, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain and Fa Yeung Nin Wa all approach that level.
I can think of only one brief sequence in L’Atalante that uses any special visual effects shots, a dream that lasts about two minutes. In The Crowd there is a matte shot of the boy running in front of the vehicle. Are there any other special visual effects shots (i.e., shots of things that did not exist on the set but were added in post-production) in that movie?
That’s a pretty restricted definition. The entire intro to The Crowd is an effect, as are a few forced perspective/matte shots (notably, the death of the father.) L’Atalante has the dream, the mutual masturbation and the guy wrestling with himself.
The nighttime sequence where the girl runs the length of the boat, the mutual masturbation after the girl has left the boat and the first mate wrestling with himself are three separate sequences. This is all rather irrelevant, though.
