Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Along Came a Spider

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Posted by Will Morrow (Member # 792) on 04-06-2001, 05:43 PM:

Honestly, not a bad movie. It is short in length, and has a decent suspense plot. I expected a lot more gore, but the only violenct images were gunshot wounds. Out of 10, I give this one a 6, which is good.

:-) -Will

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 04-09-2001, 04:11 AM:

Look closely at the end credits of this movie. In particular, look at letters like capital "A", "V", and "W". What do you see? Jagged edges! Pixels!

Gosh, I'm really looking forward to the coming digital "revolution", after which every frame of every movie will have the jaggies!

Posted by James R. Hammonds, Jr (Member # 673) on 04-09-2001, 10:11 AM:

<<Honestly, not a bad movie.>>

yeah, until the last half hour.

SPOILER

That ending was one of the weakest endings I had ever seen.

All of a sudden, Whats his face finds out where the girl is, kidnaps her, and monica potter is in on it from the beginning.
How did they know to watch sonjei for a whole year.
There was no explanation as to how these two just happened to stumble upon what he was doing.
And whats with the old tired scene where monica potter sneaks up on the other bad guy and acts as if shes caught him only for them to reveal their partnership to us with a quick mugging down?
how many times have i seen that?

oh, i didnt like kiss the girls either.
i believe there are seven books in this series?

please dont let them make five more movies.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-09-2001, 02:52 PM:

Aaron said: "Look closely at the end credits of this movie. In particular, look at letters like capital "A", "V", and "W". What do you see? Jagged edges! Pixels!"

They don't make titles like they used to! But if digital is used, at least use enough resolution to avoid the "jaggies".

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Posted by Aaron Haney (Member # 747) on 04-10-2001, 07:25 AM:

I'll bet those end credits were a rush job, and that's why they looked so bad. They weren't even anti-aliased! Argh!

In all fairness, there were plenty of other computer-processed shots in this movie that looked much better than the end credits. Most of the conversation scenes inside moving cars looked like they were green/blue screened (the lighting didn't match), and they looked pretty nice (a little soft, but no noticeable pixellation). There was also the car crash during the opening scene, which didn't exhibit much digital artifacting either (although the splash of water when the car hit the edge of the bridge looked pretty laughable). Plus there were probably a couple of other shots here and there that had been touched up via computers that went by so fast I couldn't notice on the first viewing.

The photography in this movie really disappointed me. I had high hopes based on what I saw in the trailers (and the first movie in this series, Kiss the Girls), but there were quite a few times when the images looked grainy or underexposed. I can't say for sure, but I don't believe that was a stylistic choice; it seemed like they were going for that nice, fully-saturated look ... and missed. Too bad.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 06-18-2001, 05:34 AM:

I kinda liked this movie. I saw it twice but prefered it the first time, but this might have been because the volume was very loud on the second viewing and i had a headache before I went in. I havent seen Kiss the Girls, was it a lot gorier that Along came the spider? Kiss the Girls had a higher rating here in the UK.

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Michael Brown
Bradford Student Cinema
www.bradfordstudentcinema.co.uk