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[The Take Out Bandit]

You see, you see - this is why I absolutely adore Blade 2!

See that caption? That's right - Pure Action Bloody Well Done! You see motherfuckers getting their mudhole stomped in, and it looks exceptionally painful.

It's certainly not because Blade is an interesting character. Blade sucks.

Blade 2 also avoids the use of Honky Fu. White people, or untrained Americans (Granted Snipes has marital arts training - I don't care), doing extensive martial arts scenes; which only look awkward.

Blade 2 is a love letter to ultra-violent action movie fans.

Shakey-Cam warnings (from good friends) have kept me from seeing Batman Begins. Stow it Bat-nerds, I ain't buying your faux intellectual comic geek bullshit! In addition to being the world's greatest pedophil^H^H^Hdetective - Batman is also a man of action, and the comics rarely miss a chance to mention this to readers. Showing him doing his shirtless gymnastics in front of Robin. Sparring with Robin. Packing fudg. . .

I'm not saying you need to copy Yuen Wen Wo Ping Pong Balls, because Jesus knows American cinema managed to churn out some utterly bad ass standard setting action movies prior to the release of the Jackoffski Brother's sweetboy wetdream.

Batman hitting shit yo!

Sort of how the Hulk punching that dog in the motherfucking throat rocked so god damn hard. In the throat! That's how you know Hulk not fuck around!

You can have a well written comic movie, without skimping on the action (The Hulk). Stop trying to explain away a huge percentage of why folks read these juvenile power trip tales in the first place, because that's part of what we want to see when we go to see these movies.

Getting away from Batman for a moment, shakey cam plagues too many action movies these days; and I can't wait for someone to drive a stake through it's heart. Or better yet, swing it around by the ankle, smack it's head into a marble pillar, beat it's face in, then stuff a super duper light grenade in it's mouth and say something totally bad ass as they walk off and Shakey Cam explodes into a million beefy chunks.

Castellan: You do the Discovery Channel cinematographers a disservice by likening their camera work to shitty Hollywood action movies. Yeah, it's chaotic looking but at least I can see the Cheetah is mauling the shit out of that rabbit.

 

[nitewulf]

i thought bourne supremecy was well done, the fights were quick abd brutal. bourne seemed really, really good. as it was meant to be.
the thing with BB is though, it was just too dark. anyway, i cant believe some of you are that annoyed as to have the movie ruined for you.
its not like all the fights were like that, the first fight on the mud, the training session with ducard on ice, the fight with ken watanabe, and latter fights were all pretty clear.
the one at the docks was the only one that i couldnt follow.

 

[yoshifumi]

i thought the shaky cam made the bourne supremacy a lot worse than it could've been, but i think the whole concept wasn't as good as identity anyway. i still liked the movie, but i think i would've liked it almost as much as identity if there was no shaky-cam

 

[Stench]

Well, just like zoom lenses in the 1970s, this stylized handheld effect is simply nothing but a fad; some new technique that filmmakers will eventually come to realize is simply just a horrible way of capturing action on film.

I think this device really started to hit its stride in 1998 after Saving Private Ryan. Many people really seem to underappreciate the effect the film had - not simply from a storytelling perspective, by capturing WWII in such vivid detail, but from a technical perspective as well. Thanks to Janusz Kaminski's photography and Spielberg's direction, we have to thank the "modern production mythos" that seems to have swept Hollywood - high-contrast images and handheld extravaganzas.

Again, this is nothing but a fad, just like bloom lighting in video games, and it'll go away once people like Michael Bay get bored and try to adopt something else. As mentioned earlier, I personally think its popularity is due to the fact that it requires no effort at all.

Think about it: why bother choosing appropriate lenses and lighting a scene adequately when you can just shake the fuck out of a camera and cut away .5 seconds later in post-production? To the filmmaker, it saves time, saving money as a result, while also adding a "stylistic flair" to the picture, which is really just total bullshit. It also goes hand-in-hand with the new type of ideology directors are starting to take in terms of action scenes - instead of planning out fight sequences visually, they simply get as much coverage from as many different angles as they can and shove it all to the editor, who has to sort through the mess and come up with something semi-cohesive. Hence, the poor cutting.

Frankly, I think it's going to be the stuntmen who'll snap and start demanding that their work is actually shown in a way that audiences can actually comprehend. They're getting really adamant about Academy recognition at the Oscars, so we'll see how this pans out.

 

[Prospero]

Blade 2 is a love letter to ultra-violent action movie fans.

That post was a thing of beauty, and it made me want to watch Blade 2 again (ropey CG effects and all). I still remember the stunned silence in the theater after that movie was over--for some people in the audience it must have easily been the most violent movie they'd ever seen.

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Take Out Bandit: The fight scenes in Batman Begins are not so bad as to prevent you from enjoying the film. Not even close. You should go see it.

Oh, and you should probably be shot for mentioning The Hulk at Batman Begins in the same post.