23 August, 2011

CHAOS CINEMA: The decline and fall of action filmmaking

An interesting video essay on "intensified continuity" - a film style that can't have a cut that lasts for more than 2 seconds, disorientates the viewer, and is, generally speaking, just plain hyper.

One problem I have here is that I haven't seen most of the movies he cites as being infected. The last Star Trek film suffered from it as did Inception but I don't think I've seen any of the other ones. I mostly avoid big budget action movies partly because I am not ADD and don't want to subject myself to intensified continuity and partly because I have no interest in movies based on video games, toys, comic book superheroes, and children's cartoons.

I suspect that this style really got the boost it needed from the opening action scenes of Saving Private Ryan and snowballed as CGI got better to the point now where it seems like it's just a big pissing match.

Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.



Chaos Cinema Part 2 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

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