Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Master and Commander

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-13-2003, 05:41 AM:

For the search engine: Master & Commander

This review is going to be split into two parts. First, the technical and second the content.

TECHNICAL - this movie just sucks visually and audibly. The only thing this flick has going for it is that it is a scope film. However it certainly wasn't shot anamorphic, as the image looks dirty, bland and blurry. Deluxe's CRAP code and negative dirt certainly didn't help things either. But you know what, nothing and I do mean nothing, comes close to just how shitty of a job they did with the sound mix on this film. I screened it in an auditorium that sounds fantastic on anything I throw in there. The fader runs between 6.5 to 7.5 on every film. For this movie, even turning it down to 5.0 was still too loud! It wasn't even such that it was so loud, but it was so harsh and rough. This is a great example of "Ear Fatigue 101". The loud scenes are loud, and that's it. (Do take note the dialogue scenes are recorded low to force you not to turn it down too much.) There is no quality or art to the mix. When it is quiet it is fine, when it is loud, it is a BAD loud.

I give technical 1/2 star out of 5

CONTENT - yawn, boring, does anyone care who lives or dies, zzzzzzzz, someone wake me up when it's over! This movie is 2 hours and 20 minutes, but if I wasn't clocking the run time, I would've guessed it was somewhere between 5 to 6 hours long. This thing just dragged and dragged, then went off into tangents, then dragged some more. Every once in a while, something will happen to perk the interest, but it's rare. Now in all fairness, had their been sound that was somewhat acceptable, I may have enjoyed the content part of this film more, but as I write this I have a pounding headache from the sound.

I give content 1 star out of 5

Watch how fast this movie DIES!

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 11-13-2003, 12:20 PM:

I ended up enjoying the movie. I was quite intrigued by the story and the adventure of finding the French ship. I liked that they didn't give us nonstop action with no story. I do agree that the picture was bad. This was a film that should have been shot anamorphic and it clearly wasn't. The image was just too dirty and too grainy for my taste. Maybe it will look a little nicer once we put it in a smaller house. As for the sound, I felt this to be one of the most agressive and active mixes I've heard in a long time. Sure, at times it gets VERY loud but I felt it was a good loud, not an ear shattering loud. The cool thing about this mix was the use of every single channel. No matter what part of the film it is, the surrounds do not stop. You hear the ship creaking, footsteps running from left to right surround, and even cannon balls flying from the back. We aren't setup for ES (we screened it in DTS) but it sure sounded like there was a sixth channel back there. But most importantly, I enjoyed this mix because it really puts you on the ship with all of those sailors. The audience is not just watching their adventure, but we are a part of it.

In the end, this movie will not be everyone's cup of tea but it is worth checking out. I think the reason I enjoyed it so much was that it was something different than the usual garbage Hollywood puts out. It was a nice shift of pace and setting to put me on a 19th century English battleship that is chasing a French ship. Yes, I said put me on that ship because this sound mix does literally put you inside that ship.

AJG

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 11-13-2003, 02:57 PM:

I saw an exhibitors screening of Master and Commander. I'm a fan of the book series and was looking forward to the film. I like sailing, tall ships and seafaring stories.

But somehow the film left me feeling uninterested. I sort of didn't follow the story even though I had read the book and knew the story. I couldn't place the problem, but I think Brad may have touched on some of the reasons why I was uninterested.

I think some of the film showed how people lived at sea better than some other films. I liked that Russell Crow couldn't stand up below decks. I was on an East India Trader in Amsterdam and couldn't beleve how low the decks were. Most decks are about 5'6" apart.

Posted by Jason Black (Member # 684) on 11-13-2003, 11:59 PM:

I was surprised, to say the least. While I had no real interest to see the film, other than to see how well it lived up to my bad expectations, I was actually impressed.

Yes, the sound issue pestered the shit out of me, yes, I noticed it was grainy (in places), but it did, like Aaron said, bring me aboard the ship. The storm scene made me drift back to The Perfect Storm, but, I overlooked that. It did seem to drag on in places, bust so have most other movies on screen this year...

Overall, out of 4 ****, I give it 2.

Posted by Sam Hunter (Member # 1119) on 11-14-2003, 09:28 AM:

Call this a pre review if you will [Roll Eyes]

.
You guys mentioned that it was boring in some places. Look at it this way, the story takes place on a ship in the ocean and being that it wasn't a cruise liner or something with a lot of activities (Love Boat) for the crew ,master and commander to do between battles or whatever just how much could they do between battles?

Posted by Bob Maar (Member # 763) on 11-14-2003, 09:55 AM:

The Providence Journal gave Master and Commander it's Highest rating of four Stars.

http://www.projo.com

The New York Post gave it three and a half stars.

http://www.nypost.com

Trivia: The ship used in the film was built and is moored here in Newport, RI.

Surprise! Master and Commander ship is actually Tall Ship Rose
BY MARY GRADY
Special to the Journal

While watching Master and Commander this weekend, Rhode Islanders might notice something familiar about the H.M.S. Surprise, the stout ship sailed by Capt. Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe).

Those tall masts with their fighting tops, the bulging sides full of cannon ports, the high, jaunty angle of the bowsprit . . . that is not some phony Hollywood computer graphic, but the actual Tall Ship Rose, born and bred in Newport.

Thousands of Rhode Islanders have toured the Rose's tarred wooden decks, cruised beneath those square white sails on a breezy summer day, climbed the rigging, and covered their ears when the cannons boomed.

Richard Bailey, a native Rhode Islander and captain of the Rose, recalls meeting filmmaker Peter Weir in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the summer of 2000. "Peter had been to Europe to see some other ships, but I told him why each and every one of them was wrong," Bailey recalls. "The Rose was the only ship that was right for the movie. It has the frigate's flared sides, called tumble-home, so when ships lay alongside each other in battle the cannons can still function. None of the other ships had that."

Weir was so taken with the Rose that he stayed for three days. By the time he left, he was convinced the Rose was born for the role of Surprise.

The studio bought the ship for $1.5 million, and asked Bailey to stay on as captain.

Bailey had worked with the Rose since the early 1970s, shortly after it arrived in Newport. The ship, built by local historian John Millar to celebrate the nation's bicentennial, had sat idle at the Newport waterfront for years, trying to survive as a dockside attraction.

In 1992, it was reborn as a nonprofit sail-training vessel, based in Bridgeport, Conn. Bailey sailed the ship to Newfoundland, the Great Lakes, the Caribbean, even to Europe, and often visited Rhode Island waters.

Volunteer sailors and paid crew of all ages, from all walks of life, with nothing in common except a love of ships and the sea, swabbed decks and furled sails and stood midnight watch together.

The first stop for the Rose as it began its voyage to Hollywood was a Newport shipyard. The ship was hoisted into drydock, torn apart, and rebuilt from stem to stern. New engines were installed, with double the horsepower. The decks and details of the rigging were redesigned to match Surprise as described in Patrick O'Brian's seafaring novels, the basis of Weir's movie.

"Peter is very, very meticulous about the historical details," Bailey said. "He wanted to make a richly detailed film -- and he did."

By January 2002, the major work was done, and the crew of the Rose launched from Newport on a cold winter day.

"Two days out from Newport, we ran into the worst storm the Rose has ever sailed in," Bailey said. "Winds were up to 78 knots. We got beat up, we got wet. But we were fine."

The ship sailed for 39 days, past Florida, across the Gulf of Mexico, through the Panama Canal, and up the West Coast to San Diego.

After more refitting there, ship and crew sailed south to Ensenada, in Baja, Mexico, to the same movie set where Titanic was shot.

"There are actually three ships that are the Surprise in the movie," says Bailey. "There was a full-scale replica built in a tank, on a gimbal so it could roll and pitch just like a ship at sea. It has a full rig and is identical to the Rose, except the rig is really only about two-thirds of the full height.

"There was a 40-foot-long model that was built in New Zealand. And there was the actual full-size Rose. So, when you see a helicopter shot of the ship sailing, that is definitely the Rose. But the rest of the shots, unless you looked at each one frame by frame, there is no way to tell really which is which."

Bailey sailed the Rose in the Pacific waters off the coast of Mexico for the film. He spent about a week teaching the actors how to look like sailors, and another two or three weeks of sailing for the cameras.

"A lot of people got seasick, but Russell Crowe never did, and he's very proud of that," said Bailey.

Most of the battle scenes were shot in the tank, Bailey said, so no damage was done to the actual ship. Some of the extras in the film are the ship's crew trained to look like actors, and others are actors trained to look like sailors.

For the scenes of sailing off Cape Horn, a film crew shot actual footage of the storm-tossed sea on location, and the ship later was inserted into those waves by digital magic.

So, now that the movie is out, what is next for the Rose?

Bailey would like to see the ship return to its former sail-training mission, based in Newport, open for anyone to come aboard and experience the wind and sea as Aubrey and his crew knew them. However, Michael Shanahan, a spokesman for the Maritime Museum of San Diego, confirmed last week that his museum is negotiating with 20th Century Fox to provide a dock for the Rose.

"The studio would retain ownership, but it might be kept here," said Shanahan. "We might have some news soon, but nothing has been finalized yet."

Mary Grady is a former Providence Journal section editor who has led school groups on sailing adventures aboard the Rose and written about the experience.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-16-2003, 05:15 AM:

Another great movie from Peter Weir. Enormous attention to historical detail, from the daily workings of the ship to smallest detail like the gut strings on the instruments (instead of steel) or the way Crowe holds his violin (supported on the chest rather than on the shoulder).
Great portions of the film were obviously shot with little artificial light, that explains some of the haziness of the film, perfectly apt for a ship sailing through fog and storm, although some viewers probably would have preferred the usual sail-against-deep-red-sunset shots.
Great sound, too. The very sparingly use of music makes the musical scenes (with tastefully chosen music by Bach and Vaughan Williams), the general quietness the battle scenes all the more effective. Though the guns are really loud, there is a lot of sonical detail going on during the battle scenes. You can hear exactly from which direction the gun shots come, you hear the creaking of the ship and the fighting sounds, the splinters fly across the room. I also liked the use of the surrounds during the quiet scenes, adding a lot to the athmosphere of being on a rolling, creaking sailing ship.

Weir does not simply show us heroic men sailing from one adventure to the next, he explores their characters, their motivations and shortcomings. The 2 leading characters are men at the beginning of the 19th century - a century of many discoveries and innovations, and those characters reflect many aspects of the culture and the prevailing themes of that era.

The movie also intelligently sums up the French-British naval struggle of that time. While the French had indeed technically more advanced ships than the British, they were outwitted many times by superior seamanship. Not only did the French fail to invade England, but the outcome of this conflict established the British Navy as the superior naval power throughout the century.

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 11-16-2003, 10:19 AM:

It's a terrific film. Too bad it wasn't real Scope (or 65mm).

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 11-16-2003, 01:01 PM:

The one-line assessment from my old calculus prof, who saw it Friday at the Century Orleans here:

"A sea picture that's actually better than most B pictures."

Another friend and retired projectionist saw the same show (opening night) and reported a great presentation at the Orleans--in frame, in focus, good sound level, not a scratch on the print.

Posted by Geoffrey Weiss (Member # 882) on 11-16-2003, 06:05 PM:

I saw the film at the Colony in Raleigh, NC. The automation kicked the lights and slide show on at the end of the trailers, so we missed the first five minutes. I'm glad I'd read the books, which I love.

This theatre has no surround, but I'm anxious now to see it in a surround auditorium to judge the mix for myself. Maybe the CRAP code wouldn't have been so egregious had it not been printed squarely at the visual focus of the shot. ARRRRRRGH!

M & C is a thinking man's action movie--not that any of you who didn't like it aren't thinking men because you certainly are, but I'm an academic geek, so I loved the stop at the Galapagos Islands. The details like the gut strings and the transformation of the captain's cabin during an engagement brought the history I'd read about in the books to life.

It's very talky, but what would we expect from the director of "The Last Wave" et. al. For me, the delight of the movie is the deliberate (very slow by modern standards) pacing that mimics 18th century life. It sometimes took hours for ships in sight of each other to engage, as the scene shows where the Surprise flees the Acheron until the coming of dark.

And the dinner scenes are well-done ensemble pieces where each actor gets to flesh out his character.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the score. I really liked the use of period music for the most part. It was a gutsy choice in the age of "A Knight's Tale."

Not a swashbuckler (a genre I also love) but an excellent historical film.

It will sink like a stone and Weir will probably never work again, given how much money they spent!

Geoff Weiss

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-16-2003, 09:29 PM:

quote:
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the score. I really liked the use of period music for the most part.

Hey, I did! [Wink]

BTW, the music is not really period, but still very well chosen for this movie. Bach`s cello suite is a particularly intelligent choice - it`s not only the doctor`s instrument, but its exploration of the tonal and harmonic range at the beginning of the 18th century is an ideal soundtrack for the the spirit of the age of enlightenment which inspired people like the doctor into exploring and explaining our world.
Vaughan Williams` Fantasia with its mystical reflection on an old English theme is a romantic meditation on gone by ages - exactly like a movie about explorers and adventurers 200 years ago.
While I am also a happy consumer of mainstream genre entertainment, I am always grateful to people like Weir who take the enormous work and risk on themselves to show us something different from what we see every day. People like him are also explorers - who better to make a film about sailing to "the far side of the world"?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-16-2003, 10:30 PM:

Vaughan Williams is my favorite composer by far. I doubt I will see the film though as I get sea sick! One thing I found that was very wrong that I notices instantly at least in the preview was the rocking motion of the camera. The is about as cheap and wrong an effect as it gets. If all are standing on the deck of the boat the only thing that is going to be rocking back and forth is the background Everyone else is on the same level so to say. That was a huge blunder on the part of special effects and looks cheesy...but of course is much cheaper than being on a real rocking ship...or making the background actually rock back and forth, or bob up and down.
Mark

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-16-2003, 11:17 PM:

Actually they did have a real rocking ship (see Bob`s post above). Rocking the camera in addition makes sense, as the observer is also swayed by the movement (unless they are glued to the deck). Take a vomit bag for your seasickness and go see it!

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 11-17-2003, 04:06 AM:

Michael,
I disagree with your assessment. Having been on many large ships on dive trips, etc. I never experienced the rolling motion they had built into the camera in the film. In choppy seas you get knocked around a bit but in a normal rolling ocean with several to say six foot swells its simply just not that way. The ship is too large and too heavy to be rolling around as much as they did it. Everyone is easily able to stand straight upright and you go with the slight action of the boat without even knowing it. I guess having been on many boats the size of a vessle like that is what made it a dead givaway to me. Something in the movie just isn't quite right in the ship motion-rolling department in that film. I think the movie Pirates did a much better job at conveying what its like on deck of a ship at sea.
Mark

Posted by Geoffrey Weiss (Member # 882) on 11-17-2003, 12:34 PM:

Hey Michael:

Did musicians ever use steel strings on violins and cellos in the early 19th century or am I missing something? Do those instruments use steel strings at all?

I found an article on string-making by Daniel Larson: http://gamutstrings.com/article/article.htm

It seems to indicate not.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-17-2003, 04:18 PM:

I think steel strings were made as early as the 18th century, but for a long time they were rarely used. Gut strings were still in use in the first decades of the 20th century, and only slowly replaced by steel strings. Steel strings give a more "brilliant" and also a louder tone, and they are more reliable than gut, while gut strings have a softer, silkier tone. The period instrument and historical performance practice movement brought gut strings back in the 70s.
Today, steel strings are the norm, but gut is used in period performance. A lot of Jazz bass players also prefer gut strings since they have less tension, and give a more bell-like "swinging" sound.

Posted by Mitchell Cope (Member # 32) on 11-17-2003, 05:23 PM:

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. To me, it served as a supposedly realistic version of being on a British war ship at the beginning of the 19th century.

None of the photography or sound bothered me. I was really fooled by its CGI. "Titanic", on the other hand, had not quite adequate CGI, but that was half a decade ago.

What did distract me was the "crap code". It wouldn't go away in the storm sequence. About every 20 seconds or so, "ding". If you're going to do it, do it and be done with it. That code destroyed that scene for me. I'm half inclined to ask for a refund when I see that much "crap", pardon my French. Any director ought to be fuming to have that much stuff over their work. Highly intrusive!

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-19-2003, 10:46 PM:

11/19/2003, 3:10PM, Regal Cinema World 8, Eugene OR, House #3. DTS-ES Sound (they just upgraded - woo hoo!!). Attendance about 25. The show started slightly out of frame - I told someone, and they did fix it. Aside from that the presentation was very good, and DTS-ES is awesome!! [Big Grin]

But there were WAY WAY too many ads and trailers -- 30 minutes worth. [Mad]

Audience members were audibly groaning as this went on and on.

This film has elements of greatness, but doesn't quite attain that level overall. I thoroughly enjoyed it as a story of life aboard one of those ships. The attention to detail was very evident. Russell Crowe was OK. A film like this cries out for 65mm origination (as others have noted). As it is, the image was mostly OK, but quite grainy. And the scenes on land looked like badly-colorized b&w footage. Very strange look. The CGI work is mostly very good, almost doesn't call any special attention to itself.

The big storm scene was LOADED with CRAP Code!!??? WHY WHY WHY??? It was like every 30 seconds, seemed to be a different code each time (dots arranged differently), and the dot cluster moved around to different parts of the screen!!?? Whoever is responsible for this should be, umm, keelhauled!!! It's horribly distracting. [puke]

Posted by Greg Mueller (Member # 17) on 11-23-2003, 12:04 AM:

Just saw this at the 7 pm show (11/22) Sold out show.
The wife and I enjoyed this film. To bad they can't put them damn dots somewhere else or at least make them the same color as the background or something. They were all over in the big storm scenes which were really gray. Then bzzt...red dots. Very noticeable. I don't know if it played this way everywhere, but the music seemed to predominately come from the left speaker and was sort of strange in that respect
Russel did a good job, I thought, but his character wasn't given the right lines or screen time to endure us to him. Maybe too much was left on the cutting room floor? I like the young lord that lost his arm. Pretty smart kid
All in all a film worth seeing.

The lesser of two weavels.... [Big Grin]

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 11-23-2003, 11:22 AM:

Saw it at a Regal Hollywood 24. There was slight image bleed outside the frame. The projector bulb was not dim which I was grateful for because of the low lighting for many scenes.

I actually liked the movie. It is certainly not as good as the critics make it out to be. But the movie was pretty good for what it is. While I usually hate gloomy cinematography, I think it worked for this movie to set the mood with all the foggy and stormy days. But you definitely have to be in a very relaxed mood to watch this movie or you might get bored, especially with the first half hour. Not a great movie to check out with a bunch of buddies. The movie works much better if you go alone to the theater or with a likeminded person. The plot itself is very minimalist. The movie is more of a slice of life on the ship.

The ending was a little abrupt for me. But I guess the ending is not totally without merit as it lightens the mood of the movie.

And yes, the use of the CRAP CODE IS THE WORST EVER. You know, I didn't mind it as much in Freddy vs Jason because the dots weren't in clean patterns like they use in other movies. Now, they use these red dots in clean straight lines forming a T or L
or something like that. And they used the Crap Code at least FIVE TIMES in a 2 or 3 minute sequence when the kid gets separated from the ship during the storm. I plan on complaining to theater management. Would it make a difference? Probably not. But if more people complain, maybe that will give theater management some incentive to complain to the distributor or whoever has any kind of leverage. Can't those NATO or Showest expos discuss these kind of issues? Maybe if theaters band together, they can make the use of these codes less blatant.

[ 11-23-2003, 04:27 PM: Message edited by: Pravin Ratnam ]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-24-2003, 03:51 AM:

The HMS Surprise can now be seen in San Diego harbor. The ship will be opened to the public on December 5.

Posted by Ron Yost (Member # 1850) on 11-24-2003, 01:41 PM:

Michael, do you know who owns it now? I'm curious if it was sold again after the filming was completed. Hope it makes a 'tour' up the west coast and stops at Morro Bay. [Smile]

I took a very short 'voyage' on the replica of "The Golden Hinde" years ago. Great fun! Wonder where it is now? BTW, it's the ship that was used in "Shogun", if I remember correctly.

Edit: The Hinde is docked in London, to answer my own Q. [Smile]

Ron Yost

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-24-2003, 03:18 PM:

Ahem! Take it elsewhere guys.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 11-27-2003, 06:04 PM:

I found M & C entertaining, but even two hours after seeing it it fades away from my mind. Russell Crowe played it well, the cast was fine, but there was too much confusion and camera shaking during the fight scenes.
Certainly a ship of the British Navy was no Love Boat, but I found these always bluish, dark pictures very tiring. Some matte shots (especially at Galapagos) were awful, all in all the picture would IMHO benefitted from a more epic look without giving up the realistic details.

Very poor definition in all long shots, some clos up shots of Crowe and the Doctor looked almost duped with strange color shifts and more grain.

All in all, the film was OK, but nothing special.

I noticed a strange black matting at the bottom of the frame, it was only visible during some scenes. Much wider than a frameline, I have no idea what causes it as the presentation was flawless.

Posted by John Anastasio (Member # 607) on 11-29-2003, 09:45 PM:

Just saw it at the Hamilton AMC 24 in a realtively small auditorium. Someone had obviously taken the time to tone down the sound, because I had no problem with levels. The cap code popped in a couple of times during battle scenes and wasn't that noticeable because there was so much going on, but I DID see them. I too thought that the film was very grainy and unsaturated, almost black and white at times. The plot's pretty thin, but I thought it portrayed life on board a naval vessel much more realistically than other nautical films I've seen.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-11-2003, 08:56 PM:

OK Michael,
You're right, its a great film but does have a couple of slow spots in it. As much as I love Ralph Vaughn Williams music he wasn't alive when these guys were blowing off those incredible cannons so that part of the score was out of place in this film at least per the dates. And no, I didn't get seasick watching it.
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-07-2004, 08:54 AM:

I finally saw the whole film (as opposed to bits and pieces from the booth).

I loved the attention to historical detail and have great respect for all who were involved in the set and costume designs.

As a film, I thought it was something of a flawed masterpiece. There wasn't quite enough background material to follow the story completely and we didn't really get to know any of the characters (aside from Russel Crowe's character) well enough to care deeply about them.

The print that I saw was pretty bad. There wasn't much shadow detail, sharpness wasn't good, and R3 was _loaded_ with crap code. [Mad]

I thought that the sound was OK; it wasn't a fantastic mix, but it wasn't as bad as Brad said it was, either.

The editing needed some help; there were a number of continuity errors and there were times when the show just dragged. Other scenes were great.

It's worth checking out at a second-run house, but I'm glad that I didn't pay full price for it.