Week 48: Socials Roundup
Posts from 27th November to 3rd December, 2023
Week 48 saw the end of #Noirvember with a post on Choice of Arms (1981). We resumed normal programming with pieces on Wynonna Earp (2016-21), Bottoms (2023), and Deep Impact (1988)
Choice of Arms (1981)
After years of being a recluse, Noel is getting sucked back into his old, violent life. He walks across the room, looks at the phone, clicks off the light, and sits in silence.
When 'on the cut' his wife Nicole clicks their bedroom light on, it shines in a the similar place in the frame, despite her shot being a closeup where Noel's was wide. Nicole looks at her own phone, a similar model to Noel's, and lies awake.
The shots aren't framed similarly, but the use of light (both in placement, and in switching off one scene / on the next) ties the two together and creates contrast, while both looking at their silent phones on the lower right tells us how they're thinking of and longing for each other.
Wynonna Earp
In 30 seconds, Wynonna Earp runs a gamut of pop culture references from Deep Impact to America's Next Top Model, capped with a joke which twists biblical Armageddon into a Michael Bay joke, all on a Sorkin/Sherman-Palladino walk-and-talk. 🤌
Bottoms (2023)
In honour of Bottoms finally coming to Australian cinemas please enjoy this zoom + perfectly timed audio cue both stopping together to allow Hazel to deliver the delicious (and sarcastically relevant to Australia’s months-late box office timing, ahem) line:
Deep Impact (1998)
The Detail of the Scientific Detail in… DEEP IMPACT!
... in which we wax lyrical about some on-screen graphics!
1998's #DeepImpact was (and still is) lauded for its degree of attention to scientific accuracy. You can see this in the differences between how the Government and the Newsroom render (with 90s era CGI!) the impending comet's tail. It's a small detail that quietly reflects the attitudes of the film's characters and their worlds.
Just great visual storytelling.