h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are lots of great movies. In my humble opinion they need:

1) A great script that is focused on a few things
a) iconic moments ("You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.", understatement from Obi-Want Kanobi in Star Wars)
b) lines that can be said with conviction (no matter how cheesy: think of some of Leslie Nielson's lines in Airplane!/Flying High/whatever other name it was realased as, hearing 'Surely you can't be serious' and replying 'Yes I am serious and stop calling me Shirly'.)
c) the action and getting the next part of the action happening now

2) Action
This need not be fast or spectacular (the iconic close-up scene in Cassablanca where Rick is smoking late at night for nearly a minute in silence, staring over the heads of the audience, or the final pre-fight tension scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where the camera flits from the eyes of each of the three characters to the next). It must be tight and drive the story.

3) Story
Despite the moves for a post-structuralist, extistential 21 Century, a great movie still has a wonderful story: even if it is as microscopic as Amalie's quest to follow the trail of a man in the torn up passport photos or as big a Indiana Jone's recovery of the lost Ark of the Convenant. In both cases the ending completes the film (Amalie's man is a service technician and Indie's find of the millenium gets filed by the Government in a way that would make Sir Humphrey Appleby proud). While books tell a story and the stage shows the story, movies produce the story for us.

4) Production Values
The 1927 version of Ben Hur pitched 6 full scale trimarine rowed warships against each other. It was a proper commitment to film production (unfortunately one ship sank and everybody on it died, so the second half of the battle is small models in a bath and it shows). The use of master puppetier Frank Oz to be Yoda in the Empire Strikes Back shows how a low tech special effects provide as much and a ballanced technique on the screen as the light sabre Luke Skywaker weilds in the same scenes: its about the quality, the choice and not just the cash (subsituting a CGI Yoda in a later movie shows that the puppet Yoda is the better producion choice, albeit more grounded). Get Carter with Michael Cain films him running down a street - not jogging and vaguely puffing or doing an act of running for the cameras. He sprints hard in leather soled shoes and the head kicking scene that follows is built upon the intensity of the chase. This scene is perhaps the scene that set Sir Michael up as an Actor.

5) Acting
The difference between actors who act themselves in every movie they are in (Cary Grant, John Wayne and Hugh Grant) and actors who exude their character (Tom Cruise in Rain Man vs Jerry McGuire - a flim which has some of the best lighting I have ever seen) is not that important. What is important is that we believe the production produces the story and the characters are the people caught up in the story no matter matter how unlikely or likely a story it is.

6) A projectionist
Most of the best films were made before films were seen on telly and they show it. Bergman's close-ups in Cassablanca are meant to be seen on a 4x3 screen that is also 8 metres by 6 metres in size. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is best seen in Cinemascope on a screen 20 metres wide. This is technically straight foward - you just need cash to build a palace. However, the sound of the initial drump roll at the beginning of a 20th Century (later 20th Century Fox) film should start 2 seconds after the lights are out totally and the curtains on the screen should begin to open on the second roll as the search lights play over the curtains. The logo appears along with the fanfare in the space that the curtains have already cleared. This takes timing and skill. The airconditioning is traditionally turned up duing the desert scenes of Lawrence of Arabia (just prior to half time to sell extra icecream!) and the a great projectionist will slowly turn up the sound levels of Casablanca during the war of the German and French national anthems: the audience should be standing with the patriots in Rick's Cafe Americano by the end of the scene.

Although I am not a big fan of 'Some Like it Hot' (it is a clasic of its type), the final scene is magical. If the projectionist starts to close the curtains 18 seconds from the end, they just frame the boat with the main characters in it for the close-up and the last line 'Nobody's Perfect.' The words 'The End' appear in the remaining space before the curtains slide shut. The rule of the cinema is preserved, that there should never be an empty screen, that is, displaying the technology instead of 'The Movie!' The audience, the projectionist, the producers, stars, script writer meet in that single line that completes the action and closes the story and leaves everyone wanting more of that magic.

That's a great write-up. Thanks. It's all so true, although good casting is also a must. Casting is to films what location is to housing.

A great deal of what we see on the big screen now are formula films. Hollywood has a certain formula which is not transgressed; this is a shame because so many great ideas are spoil t by this.
You can have a superb plot spoilt by the music queuing your emotions at the wrong moment, or the hero having lost his family and of course its a little girl and her adorable mother and now he is out for revenge.
The old fashioned idea of black hats being the bad guys is still there and is carried on over into real life in many ways, for instance the wearing of leather is a sure sign, another one is the accent - cut glass English, sure to be a real villan - even german. Shaved heads, ooh somethings wrong, surely a drug dealer.
Interestingly enough Kevin Costner put this subject in a clear perspective when he asked the maker of a Russian film which won many awards if he would like a commentary on his work.
Delighted the producer provided a private viewing - he was even more pleased when Mr Costner appeared with a team of 6 - all of them furiously making notes.
The producer thought that now he was going to get technical advice on lighting, sound and so forth from one of the worlds most renowned producers and actors.
A package of notes duly arrived and much to the producers amazement it consisted of a diatribe on how the villain should not have been an American, how there should have been an American in the Russian crew and so forth.
With so much of the production of films playing lip service to the "codes" it is a delight to find films such as delicatessen, chocolate, the fith element and such like, however in spite of the annoying formulas Swarzenheggers(bet i spelt that wrong) true lies is a delight to watch, red sonja and conan are not too bad either.

I think a good movie needs:
good script
fencing
good music
a story
a good cast

the fencing is optional though

is that chain link or wooden?

Good writeup, I forwarded it to my "48 Hour Film" team.

http://www.48hourfilm.com/houston/

I think directors can make (or break) a movie. I have enjoyed all the Coen Bros. movies, I think largely due to their work rather than typical Hollywood elements (star power, effects, etc.). An ensemble cast with a good script and a clever director is my formula.

Another example is "The Graduate", directed by Mike Nichols. Lots of director stuff going on (camera focus changes, background colors, etc.) OK, the cast was good, but without Nichols' work, it could have been just good.

Surely Archibald Leach played Cary Grant in all his films