Monday, July 17, 2006

Miami Vice and HD

AICN reviews Michael Mann's Miami Vice, the only movie capable of redeeming this summer horribilis, and has this tidbit:
I worried that the whole thing was going to feel sort of small-screen, especially given Mann’s decision to shoot everything on HD again, primarily using the Viper camera system that he used on COLLATERAL. During the scenes at the club and on the rooftop and in a few parking lots, there’s a definite grain to the image, and for some people, that won’t look like a “movie.” Personally, I think Dion Beebe deserves an Oscar nomination for his cinematography. I think it’s brave, visually extreme in even the quiet moments. There’s an immediacy to the way Mann uses his camera, putting you right in the middle of things, and it’s a perfect match for the way his script works. Even better, once the film breaks free of the nighttime and Mann plunges you into the brilliant Miami daytime, all that grain disappears, and suddenly, this is a film of stunning color and brightness. It’s beautiful. Mann’s showing off the full range of what that Viper camera can do, and this doesn’t look a thing like SUPERMAN RETURNS, shot on the Genesis camera. That has a sort of candy-colored artifical feeling that the Viper doesn’t. This camera, especially in bright light, seems to be capturing the world as it really is. There’s a depth of focus that captures the Florida sky in a way you’ve never seen before unless you lived in Florida.

No comments: