Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: La La Land (2016)

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Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 12-18-2016, 07:55 PM:

An down-on-his-luck jazz pianist and an aspiring actress/playwright sing and dance to their Hollywood dreams . . . but whether they can have their dreams and still stay together is another story. As seen at the Cineplex Scotiabank Theatre, Toronto, Ontario.

*****

This is an attempt to callback to the great Hollywood musicals from years ago, it mixes classic visual tropes like nightclub montages with more contemporary staging to tell the story of a couple trying to make their show business dreams come true. And it’s nice and everything, and very well intentioned, but kind of a let-down as well. Save for the opening number, there is nothing especially memorable about the songs, the score or the choreography, there is no real stand-out number that most good movie musicals have. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are fine players and serviceable in their roles, but they don’t have the singing or dancing chops to threaten the ghosts of Astaire, O’Connor, Sinatra or Reynolds (who actually isn’t dead yet). I did enjoy the storyline, though, and the “five years later” epilog is beautifully done and very emotional, in fact the last ten or so minutes pretty much salvage the entire picture. The lighting, 35mm cinematography and post-color work are very well done. It has some pretty good laughs, too.

Two hours of reasonable entertainment. Didn’t love it, didn’t hate it.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 12-18-2016, 09:01 PM:

it's funny, the movie didn't wow me the first time I saw it at the end of October, but having seen it a second time (and in Dolby Atmos sound) my appreciation was enhanced further - the charm and characters grew on me. I really like how the movie was shot and composed for 'Cinemscope' 2.55 aspect ratio.

Posted by Terry Monohan (Member # 8285) on 12-24-2016, 11:13 AM:

It was great at the opening how the CinemaScope® opening logo came on when the screen opened up. The movie dragged in places but I did enjoy seeing It on the giant XD screen in SF at the Cinemark/Century 9 in San Francisco on Friday in the rain. It played on the XD screen that only has 7.1 sound. They have the Auro 11.1 system in the other XD screen. Even though the white screen showed as they have no masking I got into the film. They needed to shoot a dance number in the forecourt of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Blvd or the Egyptian Theatre down the street. I will have to see It in the Dolby Atmos sound system soon. It is still only playing in the SF Bay Area in limited run. A nice film well shot with great technicolor. LA LA will win many awards I bet come Oscar time.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 01-03-2017, 08:51 PM:

If you cried at Beaches and Somewhere in Time, you will LOVE this. While the other two certainly had their appeal, this one pulls at anyone who has ever lost a great love. Great European ending!.

Looonnnng shots with either no edits or edits done so well I couldn't tell. Beautifully composed shots and audio so clear that I could hear the musicians breathe (in the not-live recordings.) Best live music I have heard in a film ever.

I await a Stu Jamison review.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 01-05-2017, 04:23 PM:

in regards to the music mixing Louis - I was really surprised at the Atmos mix on how the object mixing was done 'horizontally' running music along the walls, and creating a very wide sounding sound field - I wish Arclight had put this on their 65 foot 'widescreen' screen which has five front channels/speaker setup, but even on their smaller auditorium the sound was still quite remarkable.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 01-05-2017, 04:54 PM:

quote:
but they don’t have the singing or dancing chops to threaten the ghosts of Astaire, O’Connor, Sinatra or Reynolds (who actually isn’t dead yet).

IRONY.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-10-2017, 09:53 AM:

Meh. The fact it was composed in 2.55 actually bugged me quite a bit. The theater I saw it in was properly masked for scope (2.39, of course) and yet there was still visible blank screen at the top and bottom. I realize using 2.55 is an artistic choice, but it irritates me that the they deliberately chose a format that virtually no modern cinema is capable of properly showing. I think seeing this on an unmasked screen or one masked for flat would have been preferable to a screen masked for scope and still having "black bars."

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-10-2017, 10:19 PM:

quote: Ken Lackner
The theater I saw it in was properly masked for scope (2.39, of course)
and yet there was still visible blank screen at the top and bottom

Actually, Ken-
This wasn't entirely the fault of the theater & screen design or a lazy projectionist.
The La-La-Land drive came with the following instructional note enclosed:

The LA LA LAND feature is formatted 2.55 within the scope DCP container.
This will create a slight top and bottom matte on the picture when presented
in the scope format. This is the preferred original aspect ratio of the filmmakers.
**Please DO NOT adjust the feature image to fill out the screen**
Please accept the non-rectangular image when projecting on curved screens.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-11-2017, 03:19 PM:

Nothing about my post is blaming the theater. The first thing I say is, "The fact it was composed in 2.55...." This acknowledges the film maker is at fault and not the theater. Adding the part about this screen being masked for Scope is acknowledging that many theaters are not properly masked but pointing out that this is not one of them.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 02-09-2017, 05:48 PM:

Since this thing specifically says Cinemascope at the start, is it really? It seems to me that 2.55 isn't actually Cinemascope, or is that just one of those words that means whatever they say it means, no more and no less.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 02-09-2017, 06:49 PM:

The original mag-striped (no optical track) Cinemascope was 2.55.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 02-16-2017, 08:12 PM:

Saw it last night with my bride. A lot to like, but also felt the choreography and a few portions of the script left things to be desired. Good, but overrated.

Our presentation (dual-port Sony, filters off) was just not crisp at all. Bad production? Projector miscalibration? I'm assuming it's the theater's fault, as was the crappy screen alignment so the bottom edge of the picture smiled menacingly at us.

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 02-16-2017, 08:15 PM:

The 2k DCP of LaLaLand ist VERY soft, I'd say that 50% of all shots are more or less out of focus.

Color / Contrast ist great though.

Posted by Connor Wilson (Member # 6088) on 02-17-2017, 03:16 PM:

The cinematography of La La Land was supposed to imitate the CinemaScope musicals of the 1950s, so a soft picture was most likely an aesthetic choice.

The second time I saw La La Land was with my sister at the AMC Bay Terrace 6, which had a renovation about a year ago that couldn't save its poor presentation standards. You can complain about their reluctance to properly mask a film (I don't expect La La Land getting fully masked for being 2.55:1) and have the picture give us a menacing grin (due to the screen being curved at the edges), but I was insulted by the 3D lenses being left on for this film. Really ruins the massive contrast this film offered.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 02-17-2017, 03:59 PM:

Compare Hidden Figures, also shot on Kodak film, also in 2K: night and day. It had a lovely look to it but was extremely crisp in a natural-looking way. La La might as well have been 720P.

Being a date day, my date and I also went to the Fathom/TCM screening of "An Affair to Remember." Some weird gamma issues with that, but let me tell you, if La La Land wanted to look like a 50s movie, they needed some grain. "Affair" had plenty but even in that state was a pleasure to see on a big screen for the first time. And it didn't look soft in focus.

Yes, the La La Land contrast was really good, even on that crazy Sony projector. Or shall I say, well-utilized? That part was a "win."

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-20-2017, 03:01 PM:

I just couldn't get into this at all and left after about 45 min. Glad I didn't pay to watch what I did.

For me it's another one of those modern musicals where when they start singing you wonder why the hell they are singing. Classic musicals which this one certainly isn't going to be used to make the song a part of the story. Now they want to make the story have a song for no seeming reason.

I can't remember the last really good modern musical I saw... Probably was Music Man, Sound Of Music and West Side Story in that order.

Mark

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 02-20-2017, 04:09 PM:

Evita. (One of my favourite movies, actually.)

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 02-20-2017, 04:28 PM:

Like you Mark, I never cared too much for LA LA LAND when I saw it
a couple of weeks ago at a Regal theatre. Not only did I not like the movie but the dreadful picture quality from the Sony projectors and the screen not properly masked also made watching the movie a very unpleasant experience. Unlike you, I stuck around and watched all of it.

Hopefully I will enjoy MANCHESTER BY THE SEA when I watch the movie at home on blu ray tomorrow night

-Claude

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 02-26-2017, 05:32 PM:

I came late to this catch this title--just saw it the other night -- and I have to ask, could there be different DCP versions of this title because I have to say, given what everyone has said about the poor image quality, I found just the opposite. I saw this at the Regal/UA cinema at Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn; they claimed a 4K Sony projector and I found the image was razor sharp, the colors were wonderfully rich, technicolor-ish actually, and the blacks that were deep. Perhaps someone can explain if there could be a technical reason for such a vast discrepancy. It has to either be due to failure in the projection systems where the image was poor, or there has to have been different DCPs with one authored badly? All I can tell you is the image I saw was superb and with none of the anomalies experienced by others here.

That said, the film itself was nothing to write home about. SINGING IN THE RAIN it aint!! And to put it in context of CinemaScope ratio musicals, MY FAIR LADY it CERTAINLY was not. The story line was not anything particularly intriguing that you haven't seen before or that at times couldn't even hold my interest; the male lead character had some depth while the female was weak to the point of being almost boring. It was uneven and at times I was thinking, where's the effin editor?

Vocally Stone's thin voice seemed to always be on the verge of going flat or perhaps it was just the Autotune doing the best it could. Gosling by far had the better voice, more full-bodied with an interesting vibrato, but that said, he never came off as being a standout singer; they both were just passable. And as has been pointed out, it was the dénouement that had a decent payoff with a good bit more depth than the body of the film. Without that well constructed finale, it would have been a big disappointment.

As for their dancing, excuse me, but these two are no Fred and Ginger as the director actually dared to say outloud in an interview. Their dancing look exactly like what it was, two actors who were taught how to dance in a few months of pre-production just enough to make it work in front of the camera. These are definitely NOT seasoned hoofers that have honed their craft for years.

Then there was the story the publicity machine cranked out praising Gosling for the fantastic job he pulled off "learning how to play the piano" with the inference being that he actually played the piano in those sequences; NOT. Sure, he learned how to finger the keys, but anyone who watched carefully could see the trickery -- on the VERY few closeups where the camera lingered on his hands, they were of music riffs that were relatively simple that even my nephew could learn them, but as soon as the music progressed quickly to intense, complicated jazz, then they cut to long shots, every craftily done I will admit, but in those shots, all that was necessary was for him to get approximate fingering over the right areas of the keyboard. The rest of the shots were fast cuts and moving shots were where you could see his hands but the camera movement made it very difficult to actually pinpoint what keys he was hitting. The trick is to just make sure you don't double hit, i.e., have fingers pressing two keys instead of one. It was all very cleverly done so as to give a very believable illusion that what you heard was actually him at the keyboard. Which of course is all the filmmaker needs to do; this silly need to make the public believe the actor was actually playing is just Hollywood stupid.

And BTW, this was done much more convincingly decades ago with Tyrone Power brilliantly "key-syncing" Carmen Cavallaro in the EDDY DUCHIN STORY where there are closeup, full shots of Power playing and the shots were held for extended long periods making it very easy to see his fingering and you would swear he is playing; it can be done. But back then they made no bones about the fact that Cavallaro was playing on the soundtrack. THE EDDY DUCHIN STORY is a schmaltzy film, but well done with some good tunes to listen to, not to mention it's also got Kim Novak good to look at well.

I second Ken on LA LA LAND...a big Meh!

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 02-26-2017, 08:57 PM:

We are playing this right now. Our screen is 2:1, so we normally run scope movies zoomed in slightly to fill the screen...but for this one, I went with the letterboxing even though I hate the way that looks, but it's a good thing I did because there were several scenes (including the title card) that would have had vital information cut off had we gone with the 2:1 presentation.

I will say that I liked it way better than I thought I would. I wasn't transported and captivated by it, the way a lot of the critics were. I enjoyed Emma Stone's performance the best but I'm a fan of hers, so that could explain that.

I thought the singing was just OK. I suppose it takes a lot of gumption for non-singer actors to take on singing roles, but back in the day, they'd replace a non-singer's voice with a real singer for the songs. This movie could have benefited from that, maybe. The songs themselves were great, especially the jazz-club numbers. I like that kind of stuff, especially when performed live.

I was more interested in the single-take musical numbers, especially the opening song which was flat amazing. How they managed to pull that off in one take is mind-bending, especially considering all the people and camera movement involved.

The lighting and color palette of the movie was great, I thought. They made L.A. look much more romantic and gorgeous than it is in real life. And the sound mix was terrific except for the first song -- to me at least, the words are so frantic and there were so many people singing that it made the lyrics hard to understand. I was wishing for subtitles on the screen during that song.

A few people have told me that they didn't like the ending, which I can understand - it doesn't have that feel-good Hollywood Musical type ending, but it's probably a more realistic ending given the real life trajectory of a lot of actor/musicians. I liked the surrealistic feel of it though.

Overall I would give it three stars.

Do I think it deserved 14 Oscar nominations? Well as a movie, I liked "Sully" better and it didn't even GET any nominations so I guess I'm not qualified to answer that question.

In my view, the most recent great movie musical was "The Blues Brothers."

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 09-16-2017, 09:21 PM:

Finally saw this movie on HBO. Wow, way to go Oscars. No wonder people are tuning out the Oscars when they keep getting major letdowns watching pure crap getting nominated for more than a dozen Oscars. This movie did not deserve a SINGLE oscar it got. I didn't even care for the opening sequence because the song was forgettable. It doesn't matter how much effort went into coordinating all the pieces in that shot because it lacks a freaking song that I can remember.
Funny thing. The only musical sequence that seemed fun to me was the cheesy 80s cover band scene by the pool early in the movie.

I don't need the actors to be good singers or dancers in a musical. But they need to look like they are having fun even if they look goofy. Hell, I found the donkey braying of Brosnan in the cheesy Mamma Mia to be more entertaining than the half hearted singing by Gosling in his songs. Rocky Horror made good use of Sarandon's voice. Rex Harrison in My Fair lady. Even the Sweet Dreams sequence from X Men Apocalypse qualifies as a better movie musical moment to me from last year than anything from La La Land.

And the characters were just going through rote plot points for the most part. Like when the Gosling character finally finds a steady gig. Sure, it's good to be hold out for greatness, but movies tend to not give characters any intelligence. Emma's character should ahve been happy he could get enough money from that gig to pay for his unrealistic club instead of waiting elusively for a break that may never come.

The cinematography wasn't that impressive to me. Hell, David Lynch's Mullholland Drive had some lush visuals that put this movie to shame.

I actually sorta liked the ending because it made a bland movie somewhat interesting at the end.

One of the most forgettable movies I bothered to watch in recent years.