| Home
Archives
Archives before June 13, 2001
RSS Feed
Adaptive
Path (my company!)
About
peterme
Coordinates
Most of the Time
Oakland, CA
Interests
Current
American history around the time of the Revolution, figuring out how to marry top-down task-based information architecture processes with bottom-up document-based ones, finding a good dentist in San Francisco Oakland
Perennial
Designing
the user experience (interaction design, information architecture, user
research, etc.), cognitive science, ice cream, films and film theory,
girls, commuter bicycling, coffee, travel, theoretical physics for laypeople,
single malt scotch, fresh salmon nigiri, hanging out, comics formalism,
applied complexity theory, Krispy Kreme donuts.
surf
Click
to see where I wander.
Wish
list
Show
me you love me by
buying
me things.
Spyonme
Track updates of
this page with Spyonit. Clickee
here.
Essays
[Editor's note: peterme.com
began as a site of self-published essays, a la Stating
The Obvious. This evolved (or devolved) towards link lists and shorter
thoughtpieces. These essays are getting a tad old, but have some good
ideas.]
Reader Favorites
Interface
Design Recommended Reading List
Whose
"My" Is It Anyway?
Frames:
Information Vs. Application
Subjects
Interface Design
Web Development
Movie Reviews
Travel
|
|
| It's Biopic Madness! Posted on 01/03/2002. |
|
Last night I saw A Beautiful Mind. The greatest effect of which was to give me heightened respect for Ali. See, I pretty much liked Ali, but walked away kind of underwhelmed... There was a certain lugubriousness to the proceedings that failed to fire me. Sure, there was some great stuff (the scenes between Ali and Howard Cosell spring to mind), but as a film, it didn't all hang together. But at least Michael Mann knew what to do with his material. For all it's faults, Ali is a solid piece of filmmaking, occasionally even experimental in ways warranted by the subject matter. ABM, however, is extremely warmed-over mediocrity. Russell Crowe is great, Jennifer Connolly is great, the script is solid. But the filmmaking... Well, suffice to say Ron Howard is a hack. He has no Vision. He's perfectly competent, but he's not up to the material here. It's bogged down by the limits of what he can see and portray. Which is a shame. As are all the critics falling over themselves lauding this film. But I suppose that is to be expected.
4 comments so far. Add a comment.
Previous entry: "So, like, you know..."
Next entry: "User-centered design... in the SF Chronicle?"
Comments:
COMMENT #1
I agree with all your points regarding A Beautiful Mind save one. The script is the main flaw of this film. Not that that isn't Ron Howard's fault. He didn't inherit it, he shaped it into the clumsy and illogical platform for his clueless direction that it is.
Posted by BJMe @ 01/03/2002 10:12 PM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #2
Read the book, if you haven't already. It's very good.
Posted by vespa @ 01/05/2002 08:38 AM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #3
Now I know I gotta see it...
Posted by SuckMe @ 01/05/2002 07:48 PM PST [link to this comment]
COMMENT #4
The critics actually aren't lauding this film. Mostly they're pointing to inaccuracies and gross omissions, like leaving out any homosexual dalliances that the Crowe character actually indulged, and other factual details that would have marred Howard's vision: the warm and fuzzy dramatic narrative. Ali is a mess: what masquerades as "experimental" was mere lack of dramatic consistency: four screenwriters, four visions slapped together. Will Smith: fabulous. Give him the material, next time, then we'll get an Ali we can either believe in, or understand.
Posted by Lem @ 01/06/2002 06:44 PM PST [link to this comment]
Add A New Comment:
|
All contents of peterme.com are © 1998 - 2002 Peter Merholz. |