Arrival

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  • #16
    Re: Arrival

    Six, I didn't see "The Arrival" but I saw "Sicario" and I agree with your assessment. I wanted to like that movie so bad. The subject matter and visuals in the trailer seemed to suggest it was my type of movie. It wasn't. There were moments in the film where you see the film it should have been or what they were going for. The entire end felt dumb to me. So every high-up in the FBI (whole government for that matter) caters to a Columbian hit man whose mission - other then revenge for his family - is to have the drug trade be back in Columbia's hand? The scene where he's forcing the lead character to sign an official report he/and his partner doctored made me think "huh?" Why would this guy care about bureaucratic procedure?

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    • #17
      Re: Arrival

      I liked it. Thought it was compelling. Her end conversation with the Chinese diplomat was not in the spec script. This was a great addition, as well as others in the back half of the film.

      But, there are still parts of the spec that i feel are better than the final film. For example, people that I asked "how did you like it?" Often said that it was slow, or even, too slow.

      I think this comment comes from the fact that they made a deliberate choice to remove a lot of dialogue in the opening scenes and actually extend them for a great length of time on screen-- for example, when we're flying in to the landing site. The imagery is beautiful, kinda of **** I love to right, too. But it was a long shot. Perhaps it was to expand the feeling of omnipresence.

      So the scene with her student was a complete 180 of the spec script. Full house versus an empty house, for example. Less dialogue, more suspenseful silence.

      Two other points that I specifically loved about the spec was how the Heptapods actually wrote and the really beautiful illustrations of the logograms. You could better understand how complicated the language was because, even though it was alien there was a beauty and complexity that is better depicted in the spec than the sort of foggy gaseous quality you see on film-- though still beautiful.

      The other impression that remained strong reading the spec is the actual emotional relationship between Louise and the Heptapods. I felt a strong, emotional connection in the spec which I felt was missing in the film. And the reason I think it worked better in the page is because when Abbott dies, Costello explains to Louise that his choice to break the chain of the future he knows will happen is as strong as the choice Louise will make (even though we do not yet know the context, but Castello does).

      That even with the future knowledge that her daughter will perish early in her beautiful life, Louse still consciously chooses to endure the pain that she already knows she will have to bear. Not only the loss of her daughter, but also the loss of her husband. That moment connects the two species in a way that isn't felt, at least for me, in the film.

      IMO, it's worth reading the spec before/after watching the film to see the choices that are made, if that kind of thing interests you. The one thing that remained constant in both the spec and the film is the personal journey, the beats, of Louise's flashbacks. Powerful and thought provoking in both.

      For those other scii-fi writers who know the struggle of balancing the expositional science with the emotional story, I've included a link to a nice article that Eric Heisserer wrote.

      http://thetalkhouse.com/how-i-wrote-arrival/ worth a read, I think.
      Last edited by finalact4; 12-11-2016, 05:06 PM.
      "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

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      • #18
        Re: Arrival

        Originally posted by sixridgeroad View Post
        I'm sorry, you have giant space ships and can time travel but you don't have devices that pick up all our tv/radio broadcasts, thus allowing you many, many, many, many years to study us? Aren't our broadcasts on their way to Proxima Centauri or something? What, no linguists in your mega advanced society? I had same beef w Close Encounters (which I loved, despite that logic prob).
        We live among other species and we can't talk to them. If anything they learn to understand us. We don't bark at dogs to talk an convey a message, and even while we live with dogs and cats we really don't know what they are thinking. We assume.

        In that sense, the movie was right. We (as the inferior species in this case) have to try to understand them.

        Hell, even among our own people. I can go right to another country in this same planet and not know the language of my own human brethren. If anything it shows our vanity, to think they should learn our language, when we don't bother ourselves for the most part.
        "We're going to be rich!" - 1/2 hr COMEDY written/directed/edited by me, I also act in it.
        SUBTITLED
        Episode 1 (Beef pills)
        Episode 2 (African commercial)
        Episode 3 (Brenda's rescue)

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        • #19
          Re: Arrival

          Originally posted by Mpimentel View Post
          We live among other species and we can't talk to them. If anything they learn to understand us. We don't bark at dogs to talk an convey a message, and even while we live with dogs and cats we really don't know what they are thinking. We assume.

          In that sense, the movie was right. We (as the inferior species in this case) have to try to understand them.

          Hell, even among our own people. I can go right to another country in this same planet and not know the language of my own human brethren. If anything it shows our vanity, to think they should learn our language, when we don't bother ourselves for the most part.
          +1
          "I was dreamin' when I wrote this, forgive me if it goes astray." - Prince

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          • #20
            Re: Arrival

            Originally posted by sixridgeroad View Post
            you have giant space ships and can time travel but you don't have devices that pick up all our tv/radio broadcasts, thus allowing you many, many, many, many years to study us?
            That was the whole point: pull the humanity up by forcing us to decode than to learn the language. That's why they came. It was a kick toward a new level in our evolution.

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            • #21
              Re: Arrival

              Scriptus -- totally, and I did get that while watching flick -- but for me it came a day late/dollar short in terms of my real-time experience of the story.

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              • #22
                Re: Arrival

                I loved this. For me it worked completely because of its emotional and philosophical content. I'm usually very analytical (perhaps over-analytical) when watching a film, but here I mainly felt the movie. Still, I can understand how Arrival would not appeal to everyone. There are certainly plenty of holes that a close analysis will reveal.

                I love that I'm still thinking about it days later.

                My website:www.marjorykaptanoglu.com

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                • #23
                  Re: Arrival

                  I couldn't wait to rent this when available. I finally had the chance to watch it. I liked it. I watched it a second time just from a development standpoint trying to figure out what story elements the writer is building in every scene. Just look at the thought that was put into sequence #1 of the script. So, we open up right away in scene A of a bookend. Something powerful that will come back into play at the end. More than that, because of the cinematic experience where 'flashbacks' are the norm, the writer knows that we will think it is a flashback, but really at the end we find out it was a flash forward.

                  Right away the film opens with a scene that works on many different levels.

                  Be interested to see what notation was used, if any, in the script in the slugs of those scenes. Obviously, Flashback can't be noted cause it is not a flashback.

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                  • #24
                    Re: Arrival

                    Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
                    Be interested to see what notation was used, if any, in the script in the slugs of those scenes. Obviously, Flashback can't be noted cause it is not a flashback.
                    The script is a great read, and it's interesting to see the changes that have happened in the development process since the script floating around out there is a few years old.

                    IIRC, it does actually call them flashbacks. It's a little sleight-of-hand. probably the right choice so as to not tip its hand.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Arrival

                      Interesting. I guess a small cheat there is overlooked when the flash forward will is paid off.

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                      • #26
                        Re: Arrival

                        I enjoyed this film, it was an intelligent piece of sci-fi which is quite rare these days. The concepts are quite interesting, reminded me of bits of Arthur C Clarke novels in areas.

                        More films like this and less comic book films please.

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                        • #27
                          Re: Arrival

                          Good movie. Great visuals.

                          But since Jump the Shark became Nuke the Fridge, I propose we change God in the Machine to Aliens in the Machine. That's where this story lacked, I think.

                          I did enjoy it though so it wasn't a total loss.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Arrival

                            I love the movie. Sicario was fantastic too from the same director. But unlike Sicario, I don't think Arrival had great cinematography.

                            It was clear that the director wanted the movie to be shot in a way that Tarrence Mallik movies are shot. But arrival is shot in a very bland and dark way with a bluish light. I would argue that it is technically very flawed. Unlike in Lubezki's work with Malik, where yellow and orange colors work are making dark parts even darker because of contrast. The bluish color in Arrival just makes everything bland. They probably wanted to reseble actual daylight or natural light. But to me, this failed completely.

                            Also the framing of the shots were often awkward and mediocre. I just hate to think about how much better it could have been if it had been made with a better cinematographer.

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                            • #29
                              Re: Arrival

                              Originally posted by Bananos View Post
                              I love the movie. Sicario was fantastic too from the same director. But unlike Sicario, I don't think Arrival had great cinematography.

                              It was clear that the director wanted the movie to be shot in a way that Tarrence Mallik movies are shot. But arrival is shot in a very bland and dark way with a bluish light. I would argue that it is technically very flawed. Unlike in Lubezki's work with Malik, where yellow and orange colors work are making dark parts even darker because of contrast. The bluish color in Arrival just makes everything bland. They probably wanted to reseble actual daylight or natural light. But to me, this failed completely.

                              Also the framing of the shots were often awkward and mediocre. I just hate to think about how much better it could have been if it had been made with a better cinematographer.
                              I agree. Visually its flat, for me.
                              "We're going to be rich!" - 1/2 hr COMEDY written/directed/edited by me, I also act in it.
                              SUBTITLED
                              Episode 1 (Beef pills)
                              Episode 2 (African commercial)
                              Episode 3 (Brenda's rescue)

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                              • #30
                                Re: Arrival

                                Originally posted by madworld View Post
                                I thought about this for days after.

                                Sign of a good movie.

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