Gravity - Part 1

[redhawk23]

Congrats to everyone involved!

Spoiler

It's been nuts following the production of this movie for so long, from its early casting struggles, to hearing about it filming to it dropping off the radar for a long time, to the arguments in this thread about "how bad" the test screenings were going and whether or not a movie about a woman jumping from place to place could be engaging.

And now here we are.

 

[Whiskey Tango]

Well that seems like a ****ing huge spoiler. Thanks.

 

[Boom]

Well-deserved wins for a masterpiece.

 

[dark_b]

fantastic news about the oscars.

there was an interview 2 weeks ago. the creator of the software to render Gravity said that the movie was finished almost 1 year before the realese. and they realesed it in october 2013 for the oscar nominations. haha it helped

 

[Octoberist]

Long live Cuaron!

 

[dark_b]

people who liked the movie and didnt watch it in the theater. you made a big mistake.

 

[Bullseye1]

Congrats on the wins. Pity it missed out on best picture.

 

[Octoberist]

it's been a good year. most of the winner deserved their win!

 

[craigdbfan]

2013 was a great year in films. Most definitely.

 

[Team Andino]

Hated that I missed out on getting to see this in theaters, I was on the edge of my chair earlier tonight as I watched it for the first time. Wish it would get a re-release in IMAX for morons like me to catch it the way it's meant to be seen.

 

[Alex_Spider]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCm3FYp4hdI

What the heck? Their space suits and the interiors of the stations were cgi? Was everything cgi in this movie? I don't get it, why couldn't they build practical sets instead?

 

[dark_b]

for that exact movie that you watched they couldnt. if they could Cuaron wouldnt use cgi. ihe said that first he was naive thinking that they could make it with practical effects.

 

[DA_Champion]

A question for film/literature experts:

Does the movie being 90 minutes long count as a layer?

Because most man-made objects in space, including the space shuttle, are in 90 minute orbits around the Earth, a point referred to in the plot.

So then the movie's story would tell a cycle of rebirth, just like an orbit around the Earth is a cycle.

 

[jmc]

I don't think so, I just don't think the story really called for it to be any longer. In all honesty unlike many a director for blockbusters Cuaron knows when to call it quits with the story. I don't know what it is from some fans of big blockbuster franchises but there's this overwhelming need for longer and longer movies. Gravity proves a blockbuster need only be as long as the story dictates, and that's how it should be.

 

[DA_Champion]

I don't think so, I just don't think the story really called for it to be any longer. In all honesty unlike many a director for blockbusters Cuaron knows when to call it quits with the story. I don't know what it is from some fans of big blockbuster franchises but there's this overwhelming need for longer and longer movies. Gravity proves a blockbuster need only be as long as the story dictates, and that's how it should be.

It's a pretty big coincidence then !

 

[jmc]

I wouldn't necessarily call it a layer, the Earth orbit thing suits the story and adds an element of real time tension. I personally haven't read anything more into it than that.

 

[AVEITWITHJAMON]

people who liked the movie and didnt watch it in the theater. you made a big mistake.

fully deserved all of its oscar wins, best movie of 2013 for me.

 

[Motown Marvel]

for that exact movie that you watched they couldnt. if they could Cuaron wouldnt use cgi. ihe said that first he was naive thinking that they could make it with practical effects.

I call b.s. on this. they could have done the vast majority of this stuff with practical effects. There wasnt much done in this film in terms of visuals that hasnt been done before by films when CGI didn't exist.

this was practically a computer animated movie. how it even got nominated for best cinematography, yet alone winning, is beyond me. the vast majority of what you see in the movie was made without a camera!

 

[redhawk23]

I call b.s. on this. they could have done the vast majority of this stuff with practical effects. There wasnt much done in this film in terms of visuals that hasnt been done before by films when CGI didn't exist.

this was practically a computer animated movie. how it even got nominated for best cinematography, yet alone winning, is beyond me. the vast majority of what you see in the movie was made without a camera!

I think the Cinematography award needs to be split up to add some nuance, much as there are two different sound awards, for mixing and editing.

 

[jacobed]

I don't think so, I just don't think the story really called for it to be any longer. In all honesty unlike many a director for blockbusters Cuaron knows when to call it quits with the story. I don't know what it is from some fans of big blockbuster franchises but there's this overwhelming need for longer and longer movies. Gravity proves a blockbuster need only be as long as the story dictates, and that's how it should be.

Also it had incredibly bland characters/story so they couldn't have gone too much longer. It's paced wonderfully, as soon as you start to get tired Sandra Bullock, the fragments come around Earth again. There's no denying the technical genius of the movie but I found it to be overall really overrated.

 

[The Endless]

Children of Men was the better movie and it deserved more award recognition. But i'm happy for Cuaron.

 

[dark_b]

I call b.s. on this. they could have done the vast majority of this stuff with practical effects. There wasnt much done in this film in terms of visuals that hasnt been done before by films when CGI didn't exist.

this was practically a computer animated movie. how it even got nominated for best cinematography, yet alone winning, is beyond me. the vast majority of what you see in the movie was made without a camera!

Cuaron likes practical effects.why would he use cgi? why would he lie to reporters and infront of the camera when he said it didnt work.

do you think that they could have the exact same scenes with wires?

 

[Anita18]

FINALLY saw this today. There's still theaters around me showing it in 3D, and this week one of them changed the schedule so I could catch it before noon for less than $12. God bless Los Angeles.

I can see people's criticisms about the writing. Sticking with one character the entire time during one singular event does get a little tiresome, but it's not really the point of the movie to me. This isn't really a film as it is a human experience - watching someone go through the worst s*** of her life and watching her change before your eyes because of it. Everything the movie does is centered around making you focus on Ryan's experience: her immediate terror, her loneliness, and her will to live.

It directly reminds me of Aron Ralston, the hiker who had to cut off his arm to escape a rock pinning him in a canyon. Not the movie 127 Hours because I never saw that (the gore! ), but I was reading an article about the moment he decided to cut off his arm. Instead of it being a terrifying decision, it was liberating, because at that moment, in his mind, he was already dead. Cutting off his arm meant he was going to live. Ryan never had to do anything that drastic in the movie, but you saw the exact moment where she decided she wasn't going to quit. I cried, I admit. I have an online friend (not from here) who's severely, seriously depressed and on the verge of suicide, and that's all I want to hear from her. That she's not giving up, that she's not quitting.

The sound design of the film was amazing. A lot of the movie was impossible - a friend of mine is an aerospace engineering major, and he joked you shouldn't watch Gravity if you were an aerospace engineering major. But a lot of the immediate stuff was accurate, such as the sound. The fact that you couldn't hear anything in the beginning aside from Ryan's own movements - fantastic. The fact that you couldn't hear anything but music (if that) and Ryan's physical terror as s*** hit the fan was awesome. You don't need any of that extra stuff. Just experiencing it as she would've experienced it (well, if you could have dramatic film score playing as s*** hit the fan) is more than powerful enough.

I had to laugh when she huffs, "I hate space." I think space is one of the most beautiful things to ever exist, but I would never go up there. I respect the fact that it will kill us in a microsecond, if we make a single misstep. It made me appreciate the beauty and miracle of Earth all the more.

I can see why NASA maybe hates/loves this movie.

Also, f*** Russia. Seriously. How apropo that I saw this today. I almost had to laugh at the whole thing being Russia's fault.

 

[DA_Champion]

I've read people complain that what Russia did at the beginning of the movie is "unrealistic".

It's totally not.

1) Countries blow up satellites. China blew up a satellite a few years ago, around 2009 or so, in order to demonstrate that they have technological capability to do so. It doubled the amount of space debris.

2) If a world war ever started -- and we don't know what's going on in the movie -- it would be a sound strategic decision for Russia, China, or any country that is not the United States to immediately do what happens at the beginning of Gravity. Blow up all the satellites. A great many satellites are in fact the 90 minute orbital plane.

People thought it was pseudo-physics -- it's not. Space debris is a serious issue. There's a company a few hundred meters from where I work that does that for a business -- they track space debris.

All of which comes to show that most criticisms are simply ignorant.

 

[Anita18]

I've read people complain that what Russia did at the beginning of the movie is "unrealistic".

It's totally not.

1) Countries blow up satellites. China blew up a satellite a few years ago, around 2009 or so, in order to demonstrate that they have technological capability to do so. It doubled the amount of space debris.

2) If a world war ever started -- and we don't know what's going on in the movie -- it would be a sound strategic decision for Russia, China, or any country that is not the United States to immediately do what happens at the beginning of Gravity. Blow up all the satellites. A great many satellites are in fact the 90 minute orbital plane.

People thought it was pseudo-physics -- it's not. Space debris is a serious issue. There's a company a few hundred meters from where I work that does that for a business -- they track space debris.

All of which comes to show that most criticisms are simply ignorant.

Well the biggest inaccuracy I've read is that in real life, once the shuttle gets hit with space debris, they were pretty much all dead, because the ISS and any other space stations (if the Chinese even had one) would be operating on completely different orbiting heights from Hubble, and it would've been impossible to get to on even full fuel capacity without it having been planned into the mission from the very beginning.

But ya know, then there would be no story. I'm fine with that particular one.

Space debris is real, and it does happen, and countries do shoot down their own satellites (the US does this too) but at this very moment....I can see Russia being stupid enough to do it without computer models to show exactly where the debris would go.