Hugo
I just saw Hugo with my family. It was a wonderful film, and I heartily recommend seeing it.
Hugo is a strangely misrepresented film in its trailers. Yes, it is about a boy living in a train station in Paris, trying to reconnect with his dead father by fixing an antique automaton, but, as that plot develops, the real story of the film is sparked. Ultimately, Hugo is about the wonder of film as a medium, how films allow us to make our dreams real.
Tim was encouraging me to see the film earlier today (by coincidence, we had already decided on a showtime) and remarked that art is always best when the artist is truly passionate about the subject matter. Martin Scorsese, one can very confidently judge, is passionate about film. Hidden throughout Hugo are references and homages to important films from the silent era. We even get a brief history lesson about the birth of film as a medium. Yet even with this almost academic presentation, Hugo is an emotional story, one in which broken people are fixed by each other and a shared love of art.
I am not a proponent of 3D, generally. For one thing, I think that having to wear a pair of glasses to watch a movie is overly cumbersome (sorry to those who need real glasses,) and my eyes hurt after watching a movie in 3D. However, I will concede that in the hands of a good filmmaker, the technology can be used to a tasteful effect. There is no (or at least not much) use of the "fling stuff at the audience" cheapness you find in many 3D films, and Scorsese uses it instead to highlight the intricacies of the various mechanical contraptions that are so important to the story (clockwork is the foremost motif of the film.) If we are doomed to have all our movies made in 3D in the future, let us hope that this style of it (and, though I am reluctant to give praise to the film, Avatar's as well) becomes the convention.
A few stray thoughts: Sacha Baron Cohen does an excellent and subtle job as the quasi-villianous Station Inspector, whose primary occupation seems to be the capture of orphans, but is clearly just as broken and sad a figure as the rest of our cast. I also enjoy that Christopher Lee gets the rare (for him) chance to play a kindly old man instead of a scary old man (interesting trivia fact: Lee is a huge Lord of the Rings fan and really wanted to play Gandalf, but had the curse of being the perfect man for the part of Saruman.) In fact, I think he plays kindly just as well as he does villainous.
Strangely enough, I saw Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon only about a month ago, a film that plays a very important role in Hugo.
-Dan
Hugo is a strangely misrepresented film in its trailers. Yes, it is about a boy living in a train station in Paris, trying to reconnect with his dead father by fixing an antique automaton, but, as that plot develops, the real story of the film is sparked. Ultimately, Hugo is about the wonder of film as a medium, how films allow us to make our dreams real.
Tim was encouraging me to see the film earlier today (by coincidence, we had already decided on a showtime) and remarked that art is always best when the artist is truly passionate about the subject matter. Martin Scorsese, one can very confidently judge, is passionate about film. Hidden throughout Hugo are references and homages to important films from the silent era. We even get a brief history lesson about the birth of film as a medium. Yet even with this almost academic presentation, Hugo is an emotional story, one in which broken people are fixed by each other and a shared love of art.
I am not a proponent of 3D, generally. For one thing, I think that having to wear a pair of glasses to watch a movie is overly cumbersome (sorry to those who need real glasses,) and my eyes hurt after watching a movie in 3D. However, I will concede that in the hands of a good filmmaker, the technology can be used to a tasteful effect. There is no (or at least not much) use of the "fling stuff at the audience" cheapness you find in many 3D films, and Scorsese uses it instead to highlight the intricacies of the various mechanical contraptions that are so important to the story (clockwork is the foremost motif of the film.) If we are doomed to have all our movies made in 3D in the future, let us hope that this style of it (and, though I am reluctant to give praise to the film, Avatar's as well) becomes the convention.
A few stray thoughts: Sacha Baron Cohen does an excellent and subtle job as the quasi-villianous Station Inspector, whose primary occupation seems to be the capture of orphans, but is clearly just as broken and sad a figure as the rest of our cast. I also enjoy that Christopher Lee gets the rare (for him) chance to play a kindly old man instead of a scary old man (interesting trivia fact: Lee is a huge Lord of the Rings fan and really wanted to play Gandalf, but had the curse of being the perfect man for the part of Saruman.) In fact, I think he plays kindly just as well as he does villainous.
Strangely enough, I saw Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon only about a month ago, a film that plays a very important role in Hugo.
-Dan