This one should draw the crowds, like nothing else has recently, but that really doesn't say much. My girlfrien, who hates screening movies with me that late, thought this one was really good. The romance was touching at times, and the battle scene was nice.

I hope the boys "Aflec and the others" make their money back.

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I will grant it this, the battle scene, (where'd that 45min battle scene crap come from?) was decent, but unlike another poster, you could see the CGI in lots of the aerial battle shots, especially the ones in the airfileds between the buildings, etc...

Anyway, as I was saying, the film, overall, was a 2/5 due to the over-involvment of the love story. This, we could have done without. Too bad, fo me, this was the SOLE film I was looking forward to this year. Guess I missed the boat again. Oh well, there's always next year....

**1. Did the movie live up to the hype?

**2. Do you think it's a Titanic wannabe?

**3. What did you think of the sound mix?

**4. Does anyone actually think Michael Bay is a good film maker?

My answers:
1. No. Certainly no one actually expected it to.
2. Yes.
3. Crap.
4. Hell no. Though if he could break Jerry Bruckheimer's leash he *may* be able to show some potential. But those two seem joined at the hip.

This Movie would have been so much better if was only 60 minutes long. The actual action scenes, thats it! Thats all!

Like Aldo, I'm not a big fan of Bay's. This is mainly because he directs action movies like MTV videos. He's stylish with the camera movements and the slo-mo when he shouldn't be, but I also figured with the subject material, and a script by Randall Wallace (Braveheart), he just might settle down with the bullshit shots. I couldn't be more wrong.

With Zimmer's score and Bay's direction, Pearl Harlor sometimes felt like The Rock or Armageddon set in a WWII frame. In particular the scenes with the Japanese invasion planning, the Code Breakers, and the President talking to his Staff members. Quick cuts, flashy strobes, tracking shots and severe close ups with Zimmer's overdone Crimson Tidish music. I'm really surprised Michael Bay didn't have Roosevelt and his Staff walk into the Oval Office in slow motion a la The Right Stuff or Reservoir Dogs. But let me just point out at least two more instances in Bay's ability to compose irritating, of not plain weird, shots.

First, there's a shot in the White House about maybe ten minutes after the attack first starts. We leave the invasion with the big man who was boxing with Cuba Gooding Jr. in the beginning of the film being trapped in a flooding compartment of the Arizona. After he is submerged and his death clearly is evident, we cut to an old White House Aide running to give the President word of the bombarding at Pearl Harbor. It is almost laughable because the height of the camera is just below crotch level, and just when we think the old man's privates are about to run into the camera's lens, they tilt up to an absurd low angle shot of the old man running. Needless to say, I found this rather odd if not somewhat distracting. Just as I'm immersed into the action and devastation wrought by the Japanese, I suddenly start to wonder just how close and personal I'm going to get with this running old man's genitals. Now was that supposed to happen? Gives a whole new meaning to the term HEAD ON shot doesn't it? (I had to take advantage of that! Groan all you want.)

The next ill composed shot is actually a series of shots, but they all take place in the same locale. The hospital. Things are happening fast and chaos is rampant as the wounded are rushed in masses overwhelming the nurses. It makes ER look like a practice lab. You have to give the audience the doctors and nurses' sense of confusion yet also strength in this crisis. How does Bay accomplish this? To better depict the disorder, the lens blurs. No my friends. It is not the projector. It is Bay at his best. And it is bad. I was hoping that would only be an effect limited to the trailer, but it occurs intermittently, and it is beyond frustrating. Bay was probably trying to pull off something similar to the audio level dropping in Private Ryan when Tom Hanks would lose his focus during some of the battle scenes, only Bay is trying to do it visually. In order to give you insight into the character's lack of focus amidst a sea of agony he literally makes the audience lose focus. So the optic effect just seems like such a cop out. I almost wish his excuse was that he went overbudget, the hospital scenes were the last scenes to be shot, and they found out the next day during the dailies that one of the elements in the camera's anamorphic lens was cracked, but couldn't reshoot the footage, so they decided to blur the rest in post in a desperate attempt to look artistic. That would have been more respectable. But alas I feel the effect was premeditated, and therefore a screw up on Bay's part.

I was told by someone that Bay had on at least four occasions threatened to walk out on the project because the studio wouldn't give him the budget he wanted. I really which he'd have been allowed to walk out. The action scenes were great, and it seems painfully obvious most of ILM's staff was dedicated to this project more than to Mummy Returns. Bay's films look good. He has a wonderful D.P. But in the end, it's wasted on Bay's sense of direction, or lack there of.

So I think the movie sucks. And it's all Bay's fault. But at least the Lord of the Rings trailer looks cool.

------------------
The man with the magic hands.

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please define "crap" for the sound: you mean poor sound editing? poor sound effects? Zimmer's score ? ??

"In April 1942, we bombed whomever and ... died"

"This person and that person lived happily ever after"

"The war ended with the bombing of Hiroshima on ..." (I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact date)

"God Bless all those who fought and died for our country during this war"

"Have a nice day, please pick up and dispose of your trash on the way out"

In other respects, the love story was forced, there was too much cheezy dialogue throughout the film (some that is supposed to be uplifting, but just made us all laugh) and the script seemed as if it had been rewritten about 30 times to make sure that no cliche was left out. Visually though the film does look very nice with one exception...the panicked hospital scenes. Someone really should explain to whoever was responsible that effects should not be overused. The entire sequence in the hospital during the Pearl Harbor bombing appears to have been shot with 2 containers of Vaseline on the lens! It looks like shit and was exceedingly annoying. On the flip side, the special effects by ILM are first rate! Apparently there were only 25 prints made in dye transfer. That is a damned shame.

By the way, did anyone else keep thinking that Ben Affleck was actually Kevin Costner with the way he spoke and his mannerisms in this movie?

I haven't seen the film and the earliest possibility will be if Mike B. books it at his theatre in Forsthe MT 90 miles from here; if not there then on DVD. I see from other posts that there are some "premium prints" around [IB-tech?] which are in booths run by film-techers so for a new Mission Impossible we have to see if there might be some way that Mike could get one of these specially shipped direct out of 1st-run. 4 prints reported to be in one place. Makes your mouth water!

Disney needs $140-Million just to make back the negative on this one, never mind the print costs. "Heaven's Gate," the bomb which sunk United Artists, didn't even make enough in theatres to recover the print costs. I ran it back when I was a projectionist and the 12 full 2000' reels in 3 cans were sent back after just one week, engagement cancelled.

We'll all know in a couple of weeks if "PH" is the "Heaven's Gate" of Disney in Year 2001.

As for show times, I count (for Friday), 104 showings of the film, and if an average of 300 see each show, that's over 30,000 admissions. Over a 4 day weekend, its entirely possible that over 100,000 could see this film in this area.

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