Captain America: The First Avenger - Page 3

SPR's battle scenes are a deliberate judder effect, which actually achieves the opposite effect of what I'm talking about. SPR judders; CA smears.

The smearing is a by-product of using digital video and capturing at certain shutter speeds and/or shutter angles. Having watched Captain America a few days ago, those smeared portions really stood out to me. Actually, they always do in movies (The Lovely Bones also showed the same occasionally).

Those scenes/shots share the same motion characteristics as Public Enemies, which was shot entirely on video. I don't think that CA was shot entirely on video, but I could be wrong.

watched this last nite. in a word - blah. very wooden characters. even the villain was boring. i thought thor was better than this - and it wasn't very good.

For some reason I had to play this disc 10dB louder than other discs in my collection. I remembered it being much more agressive in the theater.

Yeah I also had to up it by about 10db...


Pretty much agree... I think Captain America was better paced, and less cheesy than Thor, but I think Thor was more fun. Both were a little above average but not much...

I wonder how much of that is because of the type of characters they are? Cap himself is just a man, after all. A really fast, strong man, but still just a man. I wonder if that makes some people a bit disappointed after the last few years of larger-than-life superhuman characters like Thor or even Iron Man.

^ Loved both Thor and CA. I'm not a big fan of check your brain at the door movies, but both of these hit the right chords with me.

Rented it last night.

C.A. was only slightly better than Thor. That isn't saying much, however.

It was bland, choppy, and seriously truncated with a very under developed story and characters. The chemistry between Capt. A and Peggy was about as super-charged as a Hotwheels toy version of a Mustang; meaning almost non existent.

I can see they mainly hired Hayley Atwell because of her eerily similar looks to Kate Beckinsale in Pearl Harbor. Though, both can act better than that Victoria's Secret model from Transformers 3. Again, that's not saying much. The latter couldn't even be considered an actress.

It was Alan Silvestri's weakest score to-date. Sometimes the cues were inappropriately placed considering the scene. Very sloppy for a veteran scorer.

You could fairly easily tell it was shot mostly on HD Cam's as others have stated above.

Another ho-hum Marvel outing.

Now, bring me The Rocketeer! That little Disney gem is light-years better than either film with a superior music score from James Horner as well. The highlight is an absolutely stunning Jennifer Connelly.

This was a blind buy for me and I actually enjoyed it for what it was - I went in not expecting it to topple Iron Man 1 or Spider-Man 2 as my personal fav's and that's exactly where it landed, short of them but much better than Thor, any of the Hulks, etc. It was solid enough I suppose, it just lacked real emotion, kinda sterile feeling if you will.

So, I recently grabbed a copy of CA online . . . however it seems I might have a bad disc. Throughout pretty much the whole movie, there's a small rectangle or "artifact" in the top left corner, like part of the image isn't lined up with the edge of the screen. It was pretty jarring in a few scenes watching the movie tonight.

Finally got to see this on my own screen today.

Not impressed at all, I noticed the smearing that some people have pointed out.

The whole thing looks flat. Reminds of Thor's transfer and has me wondering what the hell Marvel are playing at.
I see naughty signs of edge enhancement here and there.

It also has that bloody 'Paramount line', where the image meets the top black bar.

Bah!

LOL, vive la difference! Also finally saw this at home on cinema scale anamoprhic CIH screen...and loved the PQ/cinematography/production design. The soft character of the photography (perceived sharpness and lighting) evoke an appropriate period look. The Panavision Genesis is only a 2K sensor (actually 1920, I think), and I would bet that filters such as the Tiffen SoftFX series were used here and there. It is possible now though to shoot without the softening filters, and make the decision on these types of matters in post. Take a look, by comparision, at the highly stylized sequence where the prototype Erskine serum injection "created" Red Skull. All this short sequence has much sharper perceived sharpness by design (and the almost B&W color).

Cameras such as the new Sony F-65 and Red Epic are 4K+ cameras, and therefore have much higher native resolution. This is advantageous to the cinematographer even on a movie such as Captain America where the desired affect is a softer look. The added resolution gives the cinematographer more "latitude" to select the desired look. This was very obvious for cinematographers in shooting 35mm verses 16mm. In 35mm we could select from several steps of softening filters without trashing the needed threshold of acceptable perceived sharpness of focus. You could exceed that very quickly in 16mm. We will see the same in digital cinematography.

Another interesting fact revealed in the extras is how that important appearance factors of the Red Skull make-up were CG enhancements, including some factors that would typically be done with lighting (darker eye sockets, etc). Amazing yet scary what can be done now with CG in the digital world.

Gorgeous work and fun movie.

+10, and I haven't even seen the movie, but heard the music score...yeah, pretty weak for Silvestri, and the Rocketeer IS a good film.. remembered really liking that film as a youngster.....Horner's scores back then were actually GOOD, and not the craptastic Titanic or Avatar bla-bla....

I did too. Im now looking forward for seeing them all together in Avengers.

Was it just me or did anyone else have trouble figuring out what exactly what happened at the end of the movie? It didn't seem to make a lot of sense - how was he still the same age after 70 years?

+1

Homeostasis!

It could be fantastic!

I didn't think much of Thor, but Captain A has rekindled my excitement for the Avengers movie. Cap's a whole lotta fun, unlike Thor and Iron Man 2.

The comic book explanation is he was frozen in ice and completely preserved in a state of cryogenic suspension. The super-soldier formula running in his blood makes it possible.

Yeh I guess because the ending felt rushed I didn't pick up on it but now you guys have explained it, it makes sense.

I just had a chance to watch this and it proves just how terrible digital projections are these days. The theater in which I suffered through this film was showing it 2D, but with the 3D setup, robbing it of so much light that it was beyond dim throughout.

At home on a the plasma, it was gorgeous, stunning, eye popping and spectacular.

Same goes for THOR, which was a disaster in 3D.

Well, let's not throw the baby of correctly-performed digital projections out with the bathwater of incorrectly-performed digital projections.

Porsche 911s are also terrible, if you try to use them to stir the cream into your coffee.

How does one incorrectly use a DCI projector?

As Matt_Stevens described, he saw a 2D screening delivered with the projector still set up for a 3D screening. Sadly, it's not as rare an occurrence as it should be.

Over half the theaters in NYC are rigged this way and no one can do a damn thing about it.

Ah yes, I missed that. Here in France, they are going to forbid these kind of things.

That said, if a 3D setup is that bad for 2D, it can't be good for 3D either...

Sure they can. Don't go and, instead, tell them why they're not getting your money. As I'm sure you mean, enough people probably won't do this- but it can be done.

France seems to have "a thing" for legislating taste.


It's quite good for 3D.