Week 87: Socials Roundup
Posts from 2 Sept - 8 Sept 2024
Week 87 posts include shots from North by Northwest (1957); Aloevera (2020); Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong (2015); Beetlejuice (1988); and Dead Boy Detectives (2024).
North by Northwest
The ending of North by Northwest is one of the most iconic train-enters-tunnel shots in cinema history, and it also alludes to . . . ah, something else entering somewhere.
What's one (or two) of your favourite cinematic double entendres?
Aloevera
Showing us one thing while characters tell us the opposite is a powerful tool . . . and can also be great fun!
Aloevera (2020) shows its 'Montague and Capulet' families are more alike than different in this fun, colourful opening sequence. Two patriarchs mirror each other's actions, preferences, and style while claiming the other is the epitome of evil.
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong is very (very!) talk-y.
This quiet, unmoving shot sees Ruby and Josh walk a gorgeously lit, mostly empty street and hail a cab in silence, staged so we have time to take a breath, appreciate the city . . . and wonder where things (and they) will go.
Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice uses a great combination of CGI, sight gags, misdirection-editing, and practical effects for this stunt where Barbara (Geena Davis) falls out of non-bed.
First; an establishing shot to convey the prior site of domestic bliss has been sold. Cut to said domestic bliss, Barbara and Adam (Alex Baldwin) sleeping cozily together . . . Until Adam rolls over, taking the quilt with him, revealing Barbara is sleeping mid-air.
If the scene cut from the overhead of Barbara mid-air to the side-on shot of her covered by Adam's sleeping form, it'd be a little TOO obvious the cut hides the platform Davis will fall off to complete the gag. So for a quick misdirect, the scene cuts to photos on the mantelpiece rattling, giving us a closeup of an earthquake-like disturbance.
The rattling wakes Barbara and Adam in a side-on shot; the mantel and photos are visible in this shot, so it ties the scene together and as well as the practical matter of selling the gag where Geena falls off the platform / Barbara falls out of not-bed.
Barbara and Adam flail about in spectacularly hilarious fashion to cap it all off.
Dead Boy Detectives
This flashback transition in Dead Boy Detectives draws attention in big ways -
- aspect ratio shifting 'skinnier and taller' while sound design emphasises the shift and colour fades to B&W.
The 4:3 (square) aspect ratio and black and white picture are 'old timey' looks, so more than just a clever visual stylistic shift, the scene transition specifically signals this is Edwin's past even before the title tells us exactly when and where we are.
The shift back to 'Present' has a different crossfade-plus-spin-into-puddle to take us from B&W back to colour, while the aspect ratio gets 'wider and shorter' and sound again ties the transition together.
It's a lot of effects going on at once, but because Dead Boy Detectives 1. is so highly stylised 2. is doing supernatural stuff 3. is clearly making big changes in picture, colour, and sound - it all works and we're never confused when and where we are.