Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-06-02 (Sunday)

Ian J. Ball <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:

The Wolf of Wall Street (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k. (But it's film,
and grainy, so I don't think this one really benefited much.)
   Yeah, I had never seen this before.
   If you enjoy funny stories about inveterate addict swindlers, this
2013 film is one of the better examples of the "genre", even despite
clocking in at 3 hours. Leo even does a pretty good job.
   Anyway, I did enjoy this.

Will you stop desparaging film? Film was always superior technology
versus 4K. There's still more grain than pixels. It's very tiresome that
you won't acknowledge this. Also, there's a video intermediary since,
what, the '70s? Nobody has edited on film since then.

You got it very very wrong. Some of it was video, both 2.8K and 4K, and
some of it was film.

Note the idiocy of THREE DIFFERENT ASPECT RATIOS. Yeah, I get 4:3 for
fictional and historic tv news footage of the era, but what's with two
different wide formats?

Runtime 3h(180 min)2h 25m(145 min) (cut) (Kuwait)

Sound mix DatasatDolby DigitalDolby Surround 7.1

Aspect ratio 1.33 : 1(some scenes)1.85 : 1(some scenes)2.39 : 1

Camera

Arri Alexa Plus, Hawk V-Lite, V-Plus, V-Series,
Zeiss Master Prime and Angenieux Optimo LensesArri
Alexa Studio, Hawk V-Lite, V-Plus, V-Series, Zeiss
Master Prime and Angenieux Optimo LensesArricam LT,
Hawk V-Lite, V-Plus, V-Series, Zeiss Master Prime
and Angenieux Optimo LensesCanon EOS C500iPhone(one
shot)

Laboratory DeLuxe, Hollywood (CA), USA, DeLuxe, New York (NY), USA
(digital intermediate)

Negative Format 35 mm(Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, Vision3 500T 5219)
odexGemini 4:4:4iPhone RAW(one shot)

Cinematographic Process

ARRIRAW(2.8K, source format)Canon Cinema
RAW(4K, source format, aerial
shots)Digital Intermediate(4K, master
format)Hawk Scope(anamorphic, source
format)Super 35(source format)

The Town (Apple TV+) - In glorious 4k. (But it's film, and grainy, so I
don't think this one really benefited much.)
   Had never gotten around to seeing this 2010 flick, directed and
co-written by Ben Affleck, before now, though my brother has been
recommending it.
   It's about the knucklehead townies in Charlestown, Mass. who
apparently have a home-grown industry of bank robbery.
   Affleck stars as the leader of a bank robbery crew; a baby-faced
Jeremy Renner co-stars as the violent, reactive "second" on the crew.
John Hamm stars as the dogged FBI agent hot on their trail. Rebecca Hall
co-stars as the "love interest", a bank manager terrorized by the crew's
robbery in the film's opening, whom Affleck takes an interest in after
the fact. Blake Lively co-stars as Renner's sister, the "town pump"
(Anim would say this was typecasting, as Lively plays total trash here!!).
   Anyway, as caper flicks go, I did think this one was pretty good -
concluding with an attempt to rob Fenway Park!!
   This is probably one of Affleck's better efforts.
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Ruthless (Hulu) - (Not in 4k, though it still looked great.) This 2023
flick was what I wanted/needed to wrap up the night - this was a
low-budget, somewhat leisurely-paced and low-key "revenge flick".
   (How do I know this flick is "low-budget"? - Because Texas Battle
shows up in this, and Battle was in at least half of the low-budget
latter-day Bruce Willis flicks too!)
   Dermot Mulroney stars as a high school wrestling coach (the dude is
virtually magic, though, as his "wrestling" skills seem to give him the
same abilities as an ex-special forces soldier, which he uses often!!).
   Anyway, in the film's beginning, his daughter is murdered.
   Four years later, he's still coaching high school wrestling, and is
now being hassled by a plucky (but kind of obnoxious) female student
(Melissa Diaz) who is bad at wrestling but wants to get better. Soon
enough, her mom's boyfriend pops her one in the face, and Mulroney's
character doesn't take kindly to it, and breaks the boyfriend's arm in
retaliation.
   The mom's boyfriend, being a total scumbag, retaliates by selling
the girl to human traffickers.
   Once Mulroney figures out she's missing, he springs into action to
get her back, cops (Niko Foster), be damned!
   This, of course, is all ridiculous (e.g. somehow, during her
kidnapping ordeal, the girl is never raped, which is pretty much not how
human traffickers work!), but I enjoyed the nonsense, with Mulroney
taking righteous revenge on a whole bunch of scumbags in this flick.
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What did you watch?
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