J.J. Abrams is I think an excellent craftsman, his "Super 8" checked most of the boxes of what passes now as great TV, and it's no surprise he was tasked with rebooting Star Wars with ep.VII. For "Super 8", he went so far as digitizing light artifacts which would have been absent from digital shots, simply to recreate the feeling of watching an actual film. This was either Abrams or Spielberg's idea. Talk about attention to detail. Very clever.
Sequels... Really make me question the value of the original, other than box office returns. Looking forward to sequels?
It's probably me, but. No. It's definitely me: I don't see all that much difference between "Super 8", "Stranger Things", "Dark" and probably a couple others which escape me.
Enjoyable and well made though they may be, I find myself actively looking for the bright spots and discounting the ho-hum, retread nature of the material. It's all subjective to the max, naturally. And part of the feeling has to do with scouring the "trending", "new releases" and "recommended for you" lists on Netflix, finding absolutely nothing of interest.
Sometimes, I see a title and/or thumbnail poster which demands a second look. Read the synopsis, meh, look at the running time before deciding I'm not gonna work at this shit for 100 minutes.
I have two fears: fading across the Styx with the TV blathering in the background, and kicking the bucket on the crapper, mid-shit like Elvis.
Back in the Golden Age of dystopian sci-fi, you could find seedlings rooted in significance. "A canticle for Leibowitz" as literature is probably next to impossible to adapt for the screen, but it inspired a lot more books and films.
It was written by a tail gunner/radio man who participated in the bombing of the Abbey at Monte Cassino in Italy in WWII. Walter Miller Jr. converted to Catholicism after the war and wrote "canticle" in '59.
Pierre Boulle was a French engineer and agent of the Free French in Singapore during WWII. He was captured and sent to forced labor camps for two years, the genesis for his book "the bridge over the river Kwai". Also later, he wrote "Planet of the Apes" which I took to be a parable about the decolonization of Africa, though I could be wrong.
There is a gap between "inspiring" and "basing on", a gap I don't see between the films I mentioned earlier. Films which reference other films tend toward reflections of reflections to the point of distortion. We learn mostly through repetition. Writing lines and lines of the same letter, when learning the alphabet. Nursery rhymes, cadence, techno and trance muzak, driving down a freeway at night with cruise on, mind drifting to the rythm of expansion joints punctuated by light poles. Now. White or red pill? Dunno.
It's the argument between cyclic and linear again, but I'm optimistic that from 16 years (to date) of continuous conflict, fresh perspectives and directions will emerge.
Which reminds me: do fractals exist in nature or are they man made? And at what level do imperfections appear in them? Microscopic, molecular, nano?
The lack of purity in film material is flagrant, needs art more than craft. But that's me.
