Serenity. Two opening scenes, really, both amazing in their own way. Joss Whedon had to cram in some exposition to get the backstory across to first-time viewers unfamiliar with the TV show.
The first scene details the main plotline, that of River Tam being rescued from her confinement by her brother Simon, while an Operative pursues her. The amazing thing is the levels. It opens on a filmstrip that tells how the Solar System was settled. Pull back to reveal the classroom withe young River watching. Pull back to reveal that it’s actually a hallucination she’s having while undergoing some kind of shock therapy. Pull back to reveal that we’re actually watching security footage of the therapy and subsequent escape. So it opens on a filmstrip within a memory within a hallucination within some security footage within the movie we’re watching. Incredible.
Now that we know what’s going on, it’s time to meet the cast. The camera follows the captain of the Firefly as he moves about in his ship. We get an 8 minute unbroken shot where he walks on nearly every square inch of the ship and spends some time with every member of the crew. Whedon shows us (not tells us) everything we need to know about the characters, and it’s filmed beautifully.
Just watched it again for the Equality Now fundraiser last weekend. God, it looks SO GOOD on the big screen.
However, the tune is the *Dies Irae *, from a well-known plainchant, which Berlioz did indeed use in the his Symphonie Fantastique, in the last movement.
I believe the opening titles are by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind.
Agreed. Interesting bit of trivia: that ship is much narrower than it appears. It was shot with an extremely wide-angle lens.
My bids?
The Birdcage. Three shots morphed into one, brilliant, like taking flight. Or, rather, landing.
Bless The Beasts and Children. All of those bison being killed. Haunting.
Dr Strangelove. You get to watch the hilariously sexual “mating” of a fuel tanker in air with the plane needing to be “fed”. Kubrick at his black comedy finest.
Yes - one of my favorites. The opening shot actually starts with a completely white screen, introducing one of the film’s main characters: the weather. The car emerges gradually from the whiteness as the shot progresses.
I agree with any good superlative about 2001, but the real, and wonderful, opening is the alignment of the earth, moon and sun to Strauss,. which was not a cliche in 1968.
But I have to say that Star Wars was the very best. The crawl set the tone, that this movie was going to be like a '30s serial, and then the shot of the rebel ship and the Star Destroyer told you that this was going to be better than any serial ever made.
Well, since we brought this back from the dead, I’m going to mention A Knight’s Tale. The noble is dead, his squires are starving, and Heath Ledger decides to impersonate him in the joust so they can win and get something to eat.
So they enter the arena while the clap-clap-stomp thread of Queen’s *We Will Rock You *plays, and you know you’re in for a treat.
I didn’t read the entire thread, so my apologies if this has been mentioned already: Falling Down, with Michale Douglas. The camera is super-tight on a pore on his face, sweating, then slowly pulls back to reveal a very disturbed man sitting in LA traffic. Mayhem ensues.
I doubt that many people here have seen this (although probably more Dopers than average people) but This Is Cinerama opens with a small B&W panel in which newscaster Lowell Thomas talks about the history of the movies, and explains how this new format is unlike anything that came before. He goes on a little too long, but when he finally says, “This is Cinerama,” the theater curtains open to reveal a deeply curved screen three times larger than the the original panel. It’s like being transported. We’re sitting in a roller coaster, in color, coming to the top of its first hill. And we ride it the full length of its run. It’s truly stunning.
The original 3-panel Cinerama was the predecessor of all the widescreen formats that followed, Todd-AO, Cinemascope, VistaVision, and ultimately, IMAX. At its best it was a remarkable cinema experience.
Here’s one that even fewer people have seen: New Magic (1983) was the first film Douglas Trumbull made in his new Showscan format. It was shown in a handful of relatively small theaters (about 100 seats) with a wide screen that was floor-to-ceiling, about 25 by 50 feet. The movie starts out like a fairly conventional documentary about a family of fireworks makers. But a few minutes in, the film breaks. From the back of the theater you hear the projectionist cursing and saying he’s going to find another print, and you hear him walk around the outside of the theater. Then a door opens behind the screen and the work lights in the storeroom back there go on, and you seem him rooting around in some boxes. At one point, he comes up to the screen, and puts his hands on it, leaving imprints.
The Showscan format (70mm at 60 frames per second) was so absolutely realistic that many viewers were completely taken in. The movie goes on to show off the format’s capabilities with exciting POV shots and other great stuff.
In many respects Showscan was more realistic than IMAX. It’s a shame it never became more widespread. (Long story short: Trumbull was a creative and technical genius, but not such a good businessman.)
I know the guy who shot that scene. He made the IMAX film To Fly!, which opened with a copy of This Is Cinerama’s gimmick: a small panel in the middle of the giant IMAX screen that suddenly transforms at a key moment to fill the screen.
What amuses me to no end these days is how much the “chatter” in the opening credits of Holy Grail resembles the stereotypical AIM-chat that is so pervasive on the internet. How did the Monty Python troop forsee it?
He also made Brainstorm which was supposed to be a regular feature film that made spectacular use of Showscan. Alas, theatres didn’t bite and the film became something less than it might have been.
His lack of business acument was contagious. A part of the reason that Cinema Products Corporation went bankrupt was because of the costs ( never recouped, not even close to ) of the Showscan cameras and projectors they built for Doug.
