Hollywood Strikes Gold
Posted on | November 14, 2005 at 7:37 pm | 2 Comments
This weekend, I finally got a chance to see the greatest movie of our generation. And the name of that movie is…
Catwoman. Yes, Catwoman. I had refused to see it in the theater or rent it or spend any money on it whatsoever, since I heard about how bad it was. So I recorded it off HBO-HD a few weeks ago and finally got around to watching it on Sunday. I think the entire world missed the point about this movie. It’s pure genius. The filmmakers are Gods. Pitof, the director, is now my favorite one-word-name person.
How great is this movie? Well, consider this. When the filmmakers saw that they had some kind of script problem with the opening scenes, and decided to split one day into two, they fixed it in the editing room by showing the second half of the day as the first day, inserting a nighttime scene, and then showing the first half of the day as the next day. The cool thing is, it made it look like Halle Berry’s character, and everyone in the office where she worked, was wearing the exact same clothes two days in a row! How was this genuius? It saved the studio tons of money by not having to reshoot any scenes. Effin’ Brilliant. And it says to potential office workers everywhere: Hey, you don’t need an extensive wardrobe to get a job in the corporate world! You can wear the same clothes every day and no one will notice! Plus, there was no script reason I could see why they had to rearrange the scenes like that – it would’ve played out just as well the original way, I think. But Pitof and his editors defy convention at every opportunity. More power to them!
Money saved from not having to do reshoots was instead spent on CGI-animated cats (and a few birds). This was obviously done because cats are too hard to train. For example, how would you ever get a real cat to jump on a sleeping body and lick someone’s face – it’s impossible! This had the effect of making the movie look a Pixar flick, especially when you add in the blatant CGI scenes of Catwoman bounding about town like an epileptic gymnast. And we know how well those Pixar movies do at the box office! Bravo.
They even managed to add in some scenes that remind viewers of those old crowd-pleasing Westerns that are so popular these days. When Catwoman is thrown into a modern jail cell, it just so happens that it has an open window (with bars) to the outside, so one of those CGI cats can enter the cell and give moral support to the sexy caged kitty-woman. If only someone had come by on a CGI horse with a rope to yank out those bars and free our heroine! Yippee!
And gosh, just think of how much better Casino would’ve been if Sharon Stone’s character had impenetrable skin like her character in this movie. She really would’ve showed Robert DeNiro what for! Martin Scorsese could learn a lesson from Pitof. Who doesn’t want to see Sharon Stone and Halle Berry leaping around kicking each other for 10 minutes? That’s entertainment. Thank God they didn’t go the camp route.
There’s so much more, but I just get too giddy describing it. If I ever teach a film class, this is the one I’m showing! Pitof, I salute you.
Latre.
Comments
2 Responses to “Hollywood Strikes Gold”
November 14th, 2005 @ 9:40 pm
Yes, but Sharon Stone and Halle Berry leaping around each other in slow motion, now that would make a good movie.
November 18th, 2005 @ 4:01 pm
I see a pattern here. Halle Berry and, uh, that other woman (can’t remember the name) had quite a fight scene in Die Another Day – and it was certainly the best part of that movie as well!