I was going to say the same thing, more or less. Kinda crappy movie overall, but it looked great.
(I may have missed some echos…)
Legends of the Fall
The Man from Snowy River
Lonesome Dove
The Last of the Mohicans
Out of Africa
Milo and Otis
Never Cry Wolf
Echos:
The English Patient
Dances with Wolves
The Natural
The Mission
The Piano
American Beauty
LOTR Fellowship of the Ring/Two Towers
KneadToKnow said:
Absolutely! I meant to put it in the OP and forgot.
Dewey Cheatem Undhow said:
kiffa said:
bbonden said:
Yes! I saw it sitting front and center in a large theater with a 70mm screen. I got dirty during the sand storms.
I also think that it is a fantastic combination of music with cinematography – as is The Man Who Wasn’t There and Koyaanisqatsi. (Thanks for the reminder, fessie!)
Star Trek II TWOK
emerald forest, with powers booth.
Famous quote about one beautiful aspect of Lawrence of Arabia:
Noel Coward (to O’Toole): “If you’d been any prettier, it would have been Florence of Arabia.”
Although it is a bit odd to see how much mascara O’Toole is wearing in most of the scenes.
All of my picks have already been named, except for Backdraft and Pearl Harbor.
Until the End of the World - Directed by Wim Wenders, cinematography by Robby Müller. A friend of mine saw this in the early-90s and told me it was the best looking near-future (the movie is set in 1999) movie he’d ever seen. I finally saw it in the fall of '96. He was right. The sense of an almost-graspable future was fantastic, in its way. And it’s a nice combination of world-spanning, urban road movie and natural, Australian walkabout. Now that we’re past when it’s supposed to take place, I don’t know if it would still have the sense of tangible wonder.
What’s Opera, Doc - Directed by Chuck Jones; Background Artist, Philip DeGuard. The Warner Brothers animation department had made hundreds of cartoons before this one, and they had it down to a system. The animators would send pencil drawings to the cel painters, with annotations on them like a paint-by-numbers kit. Toward the end of the cartoon, what with the setting sun and the smog and whatnot, there are scenes that are just black with shades of pink and orange. The cel painters were sending back notes that said “You want this WHAT color?” They pulled out all the stops on this one and it worked.
Room with a View
I also enjoyed Geronimo, w/ Jason Patric. Saw it in Wisconsin, in January, and still felt dry & dusty afterwards.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a staggeringly beautiful film. The dissolves from scene to scene were breathtaking-what a disappointment that the DVD is so bare-bones. I have the soundtrack, too!
The Bear, just awesome
Honorable mentions: LOTR and The Edge.
This recalls Lawrence’s answer when asked why he loved the desert: “It’s very clean.”
Goes to show you, Dewey Cheatem Undhow, how confused TE Lawrence was…
Seems like there are lots of people who think Lawrence of Arabia is one of, if not the best, beautiful film.
I still get chills and teary eyed watching the scene when Lawrence comes back from the Devil’s Anvil with Kaseem. That to me is the ultimate cinematic scene that expresses the incredible power that a director has to convey emotions and to tell a story.
The combination of oppressive heat, absolutely nothing environment, blue cloudless sky that eventually explodes into the exuburance of the young boy on a small camel racing past Lawrence.
Come to think of it: I just read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that is all about the potential power of writing that can allow everyone to feel/experience someone else’s life through words.
That’s art…
OK, here’s my list, in no particular order (with directors’ names, where I remember):
Days of Heaven (Terence Malik)
Badlands (Terence Malik)
Barry Lyndon (Kubrick)
2001 (Kubrick)
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
The Third Man (Carroll Reed)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes?)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (or whatever it was called, by Tim Burton)
Some silent movie with Louise Brooks (the name of both the film and the director escape me right now)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang)
Lagaan (don’t know the director’s name. A huge Bollywood epic)
The Cook, The Thief and His Wife (not sure about the name exactly, directed by Peter Greenaway)
Drowning by Numbers (also Peter Greenaway)
Panic in Needle Park (Jerry Schatzberg. I know, hard to believe, but it had a certain gritty filthy atmosphere that I found beautiful)
Lawrence of Arabia (Lean. Ok, I know everyone picked this one).
How to Steal a Million (director unknown, but it had Peter O’Toole and Audrey Hepburn driving around Rome
I am also a big Lawrence of Arabia fan.
Some also rans not mentioned enough allready in this thread are
Moulin Rouge,
Dune,
and The Cell
Rumblefish - the soundtrack is awesome, too (Stuart Copeland)
Days of Heaven. The film was shot on split days. Mercilessly hard on cast and crew, but there is simply not a filter or lab process on the planet that can duplicate magic hour light. This movie was the feature debut of the Steadicam system.
Picnic At Hanging Rock.
Citizen Kane.
American Beauty.
2001:A Space Odyssey.
Amadeus.
Tess.
Lawrence of Arabia. ( god forbid I let that one go !! )
The Godfather. ( I and II )
American Gigolo.
As for the stories about Stanley Kubrick and the NASA lens, the lens was indeed modified by Ed DiGuilio, founder of Cinema Products Corporation. Ed modified the lenses to mount to a standard Arriflex lens mount. They were rated at f 0.7 . They were considered for Eyes Wide Shut, but not used. Cinema Products Corporation is the company that manufactured the Steadicam from 1976-2001.
This quote is from the October 1999 issue of American Cinematographer magazine, pp. 31-32
Cartooniverse
John Ford’s The Quiet Man. Shot on location in Ireland. VHS copies have always been poor, but I saw the DVD recently and is it glorious.
These are all good ones, but for my money, nothing comes close to the staggering visual beauty of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls.
