is it just me? the main spoiler of my engagement with both this and LOTR 2 and 3 (apart from the fact that they were just animated war games whereas 1 was actually a drama and a not bad film) is that the central characters are BIG CARTOONS. I mean do you guys really buy the CGI character? is there any point at which you are not thinking, "oh thats done rather well", do you genuinely go blind to the fact that it clearly doesnt inhabit the same universe (Diegetic Space in film-speak) as the rest of the movie, like a Mary Poppins penguin?
Theres that moment in LOTR 3 when we see the transformation of smeagol into gollum, we see the real andy serkis in the final stages of his decrepitude, just before he gets CGI-ed: he closes his (real) cataract-blinded eyes, looks genuinely haunted, ghoulish, opens them and hey presto hes a big ol' CARTOON, with cartoon-evil-bambi-eyes. And it is all about the eyes. Judi dench said that she really got film acting when she realised that (unlike on stage)you didnt have to ACT emotions, you just had to have them and the camera would see them in your eyes. Eyes are where the acting happens. So imagine Judi Dench with everything else intact but with glass eyes. It wouldnt work. It would be like looking at a doll, or a BIG CARTOON. So the Big Cartoon, the Witch and the Wardrobe, really? You bought it?
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very good penguins
Date: 2005-12-18 08:23 am (UTC)Theres that moment in LOTR 3 when we see the transformation of smeagol into gollum, we see the real andy serkis in the final stages of his decrepitude, just before he gets CGI-ed: he closes his (real) cataract-blinded eyes, looks genuinely haunted, ghoulish, opens them and hey presto hes a big ol' CARTOON, with cartoon-evil-bambi-eyes. And it is all about the eyes. Judi dench said that she really got film acting when she realised that (unlike on stage)you didnt have to ACT emotions, you just had to have them and the camera would see them in your eyes. Eyes are where the acting happens. So imagine Judi Dench with everything else intact but with glass eyes. It wouldnt work. It would be like looking at a doll, or a BIG CARTOON. So the Big Cartoon, the Witch and the Wardrobe, really? You bought it?