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Cold Bishop wrote:

domino harvey wrote:Sad to say, but wall-to-wall CGI is just the opposite of cinema for me-- in a world where we can now literally show and do anything on camera, how boring netless tennis is!

But weren't you one of the Sucker Punch fanboys around here? :-k

Of course you conveniently left off the very next line of my post in order to score a cheap point

domino harvey wrote:CGI isn't necessarily a deal-breaker, of course, but it seems strikingly counter-productive to a film like this.

Sucker Punch used CGI to create a fantastical representation of a world that doesn't exist outside of some video game-induced fever dream, and the utter unreality of the CGI only fuels that film's ego-driven drive. If that was Hugo's purpose as well, then maybe we could talk. But it so clearly isn't.

So a baffling vintage train station set should've been built and shot practically? Come on, you can't have it both ways.

I actually agree with him and do think models and sets would have made more sense. It's not like William Cameron Menzies wasn't doing just that over 70 years ago.

But the extended shots that Scorsese envisioned would've been impossible with models and sets. Would you rather that a filmmaker not use all the resources at his disposal assuming that he feels confident and comfortable doing so?

Like I said if Menzies could do it on a tight budget why not Scorsese? Have you ever seen Chandu the Magician? It's an average film for the most part but features just the sort of extended shots you're talking about. You'd be surprised what can be accomplished realistically with practical effects.

Not a huge fan of CG, but I had no qualms with it here. Watching this in 3D may be a big reason for it. I don't know how to best describe it, but 3D viewing is inherently artificial, moreso than watching CG in a 2D movie - everything from the simulated depth to just looking at something through a set of (non-corrective) lenses. For me at least, just accepting that made the fact that so much of the film was computer-generated a non-issue.

In terms of just making a 3D film, Scorsese set out to do a historical film with new technology, and that intent is fairly organic to what the film's about, so the idea of whether or not the film would have been better had it been done in a "traditional" way didn't ever feel relevant to me.

Why be so dismissive of new technology? I just don't understand what negates its legitimacy that I'm missing. It's not like someone sits at a computer and hits an automatic moviemaking button.

It has to do with the themes of this movie. CGI doesn't bother me and out of context it works perfectly fine in this film, but considering the themes of film preservation, cinematic imagination, and all the rest not using practical effects does come across as an odd choice that doesn't mesh with the rest of the film. I actually don't think it detracts from the film to the degree that Dom seems to, and not always in the same way, but I concede that practical effects would better fit the film.

Melies was a cutting edge moviemaker who used every trick at his disposal and continually invented new ones, how would avoiding new filmmaking tools be particularly appropriate in a movie honoring his legacy?

A real simple example that comes to mind is that final scene at the party that purports to be an unbroken shot, twirling through the guests in the small apartment. In a non-CGI dependent film, this is where I'd be wowed by the craft involved, as I usually am a sucker for camera work and blocking of this level. But it begins with a phony dissolve through the CGI window, which then led me to question the integrity of the rest of the sequence (what's real and what's a computer-aided joining of separate takes and shots?), completely ruining the practical magic that comes from such artistry. On a basic level beyond the obvious use of computer graphics, this is the sort of thing that ruins what cinema does best.

CGI is a form of animation, so it always takes me out of the moment unless it's a) an animated film, or b) integrated so seamlessly into the natural world that you can't even tell it's CGI (Fincher has gotten pretty good at this). Méliès used lots of tricks (and most importantly, innovated a lot of them) but his were simple and elegant, whereas much CGI work looks like months of time and energy put into something that, while impressive, still can't escape looking fake.

That being said, given that Hugo seems to me to be going for the feel of a kid's picture book come to life, I don't have that much of a problem with Scorsese's approach here.

swo17 wrote:CGI is a form of animation, so it always takes me out of the moment unless it's a) an animated film, or b) integrated so seamlessly into the natural world that you can't even tell it's CGI (Fincher has gotten pretty good at this). Méliès used lots of tricks (and most importantly, innovated a lot of them) but his were simple and elegant, whereas much CGI work looks like months of time and energy put into something that, while impressive, still can't escape looking fake.

That being said, given that Hugo seems to me to be going for the feel of a kid's picture book come to life, I don't have that much of a problem with Scorsese's approach here.

Méliès's effects looked "fake" also, as have virtually all special effects in the history of cinema, if one is inclined to be fussy about such things. So I don't know how useful a framework that is for discussing matters like this.

My problems with CGI are basically twofold:

1) When CGI actually inhibits the telling of the story: An enduring example of this for me is The Phantom Menace, in which I noticed - upon first viewing back on opening weekend - that the characters were too often restricted in their movements and/or unable to interact properly with their environments because almost everything was computer generated and Lucas had no idea how to integrate any of it.

2) When the CGI is obviously competing with real-life visuals: A good example would be characters in a car. They're really in a car, so the car interiors look real. Cut to the exterior, and they're driving a CGI car on a CGI road with a CGI background. That transition, between real and fake environments, is distracting to me. But that's true even of older, in-camera effects.

I don't recall having a either problem with Hugo. On the contrary, I thought it was notable for how fluently the camera and the characters moved through its environments, and I'm not even sure where the real ended and the CGI began in the movie, so the CGI was seamless enough for me, as far as that goes.

Plus, while I have no doubt a low-tech aesthetic could have been effective as well, I agree with your last sentence that the world created, CGI or not, fit the material even aside from "real/fake" concerns.

Good points, though I didn't mean to imply that old fashioned special effects don't look fake themselves--just that they feel more effortless to me. There seems to be this mentality among some people using CGI (like, say, George Lucas) that we have finally arrived at this moment where you can do whatever you want in a movie, as though it's some great leap forward from what came before. And perhaps it is in technical terms, but it's not as though my emotional response to special effects has grown in tandem.

I don't have that big of problem with the use of CGI in HUGO, but I will say that Scorsese having an actual working automaton created for the film instead on relying on computer effects to make it work was the thing that impressed me the most.

Roger Ryan wrote:I don't have that big of problem with the use of CGI in HUGO, but I will say that Scorsese having an actual working automaton created for the film instead on relying on computer effects to make it work was the thing that impressed me the most.

That is laudable, but to be perfectly honest I had no idea it was real until I read about it afterwards. Which I guess could be interpreted as either in or against the film's favor.

hearthesilence wrote:I saw it with mostly an adult crowd. Another source of its financial woes - parents just aren't taking their kids to this movie.

Interesting point to consider, heart. Hugo finally made it to screens here in Hungary last week. It will be a tough sell here as many adults are put off by 3D (my wife wears glasses, so avoids such screenings) and, surprisingly, all screenings for Hugo here are 3D AND original language. The latter will of course preclude bringing native Hungarians unable to handle subtitles. The screening we attended was 4:30pm on a Sunday afternoon and there wasn't 20 folks in attendance, though quite a few were under 12.

I took my 6- and 7-year old daughters. They weren't terribly impressed and had approached with trepidation as the trailer was a little dark and scary for them (I take them to the cinema quite often, so they've seen the trailer several times). They don't speak English as a first language, so suspect that the English accents challenged them as well.

BTW, I thought it beautiful. I also appreciated the effort to include film preservation as an agenda, targeting younger viewers along with their parents.

skuhn8 wrote:I took my 6- and 7-year old daughters. They weren't terribly impressed and had approached with trepidation as the trailer was a little dark and scary for them (I take them to the cinema quite often, so they've seen the trailer several times). They don't speak English as a first language, so suspect that the English accents challenged them as well.

BTW, I thought it beautiful. I also appreciated the effort to include film preservation as an agenda, targeting younger viewers along with their parents.

It helps if they're receptive to begin with. My daughter is unusually well-versed in silent film for a six-year-old, mainly because she's voluntarily watched the 1903 Alice in Wonderland and The Great White Silence, the latter arising from a school project on the Scott Antarctic expedition. So she was already broadly familiar with the notion of silent tinted films with intertitles, and indeed squeaked "Look! Captain Scott's camera!" when she saw a hand-cranked one being operated on screen - and as a result she was much more genuinely receptive to the whole film-history and film-preservation message than her eight-year-old brother. Who enjoyed the film, but clearly not on quite the same level.

Which reminds me - I must dig out Safety Last for them one of these days...

Well I watched it back in December to a packed house and the audience was absolutely restless through the 1st hour. Literally there was an old man who started to snore and someone I guess smacked him cause he woke up. Overally though I really want to revisit this one because aside from Melies, most of the rest of the film really is just average to subpar. People seem to be too easily dazzled by these effects these days, but as Domino said earlier, I agree with her analysis/comparison of the use of CG between this movie and Sucker Punch and what themes they sort of underline and punctuate. Surprisingly the trio of actors involved with the Melies scenes (Kingsley, his wife and the cinephile) received little to no recognition but in fact they were the best parts of the movie. Hugo certainly holds the most significance to those of us who are fans of silent film and fans of film history/appreciation and I think most of our favorite parts consisted of scenes cut from other silent films in montage than from anything the movie itself had to offer up.

For something that's supposed to be a love letter to cinema, this is a markedly cold, dispassionate, unengaging missive, one that's unlikely to inspire anyone who's not already a cinephile to become one.

stroszeck wrote:Hugo certainly holds the most significance to those of us who are fans of silent film and fans of film history/appreciation and I think most of our favorite parts consisted of scenes cut from other silent films in montage than from anything the movie itself had to offer up.

I must say that while I liked the film a fair bit, this does apply to me; the moments that stick out in my mind when I think of Hugo now are the montages of early films and the reenactments of the Méliès sets. Honestly though, I knew this would likely be the case going in and what surprised me was how much more seamlessly these film-preservationist elements were weaved into the narrative. Sort of expected a Scorsese indulgence-slash-lecture shoehorned into a conventional juvenile-lit narrative, but instead the movie seems to inherit the restraint of its source material.

Frankly I can see both sides of this one -- I was captivated by the film, but it hasn't lingered all that strongly for me. Definitely plan on seeing it again somewhere down the line to find out if the more straightforward story elements in the first half play better or worse for me now.

hearthesilence wrote: I'm still not that crazy about Sacha Baron Cohen's character, but he's not terrible,

Any idea why he mimicked the voice of the Peter Cook character EL Wisty for this role? It did seem out of place.

I can't help but think that Hayao Miyazaki could have made a really stupendous, or at the very least much more interesting, adaptation of the novel. Apart from being much better equipped, as an artist, to portray the friendships of male and female child protagonists, and early 20th century France, a Ghibli impression of Melies films could have been glorious.

I thought this was pretty wonderful but there are a few aspects that really stood out for me.

The look was interesting. Gears & steam. Very steampunk. At times there was steam without a source. Lots of neat depth shots with all that machinery. Lots of miniatures and digital embellishments (I don't like CGI for the most part - I prefer stop-motion and older forms of visual effects - but I liked the use of CGI here). The whole look and tone was reminiscent of early Jean-Pierre Jeunet. In terms of content, however - kids & film history - this was a Truffaut film. Even the quirky characters inside the station are very Renoir-Truffaut, like the quirky people that are in the apartment courtyard in Bed and Board. But the look is really digital Hollywood, ILM, Jeunet. I kind of think that it should've been a 2.35:1 b&w film with color sequences (like Tetro) and not just as a personal preference but I believe a more classical filmmaking approach would've been more appropriate for the material, but Hugo is also a blockbuster and it has that contemporary blockbuster look (albeit executed very well, in my opinion).

Story-wise,

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it's clearly about rebirth. The most obvious change of heart is the Stationmaster's. He's out to get kids & changes his mind & becomes a nicer person. But, Melies too has a change of heart, he comes to see Hugo not as a thief but as a salvation. Then there's Hugo's quest, first to repair the robot. Then to find a home other than the orphanage. I guess in between to "fix" the broken Melies.

I felt there were also many symbols in the film and I caught some: the new gear-laden leg brace

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is a form of magic em-betterment that goes along with the guy's change in attitude.

I get that war wounds & loss are throughout the film. WW1 is even the presented reason why Melies

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hasn't got a job (though it's not the reason in real life that Melies went out of business).

Everyone is missing someone because of the war (or its substitutes).

And finally, Hugo seems to be a statement about how machines = magic. The magic has touched & changed & altered the characters and made

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the robot-like man more human.

I mean if Hugo is about anything it's about putting the heart back into machine/people

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(why the key is shaped like a heart.)

It fits in that movies are a technology that presents dreams & fantasy just as mechanical toys are fun. The cinema too is an invention that is magical. The automaton is man-made life. Steam is a kind of spirit & blood. And the film explicitly talks about society as a machine and each person as a working part in it. There is a link between caring for people & caring for machines. The kid himself

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dreams of himself as a machine and also of a machine (a train) crashing.

Also, I just love that this is also a kid's movie about looking at the past & liking books & using a library. Kids need to see all of that today.

There is a relationship between WWI and Melies' state of distress, though it's not so direct- one of the reasons so many of his films were out of circulation is that they were melted down to recover the silver etc, which were used in arms manufacture.