Master and Commander - Anybody going to see this?

[JohnT]

Originally posted by BeBro


I haven´t seen Luther, but just to nitpick: I´m quite sure Ustinov played Frederick the Wise of Saxony. Frederick the Great would be the Prussian King (18th century).

Well, that was the one liberty they did take with the movie - that, and the final climactic battle between Charles V and his Hapsburg armies vs. Frederick the Great and the Prussian hordes.

Other than that, it was as historically accurate as anything seen in U-571.

[Uncle Sparky]

I rather enjoyed it. (***½). The movie deserves technical & costuming Oscar nominations. I wasn't smitten with Crowe's performance though - no nomination from me !

If you plan to see this movie, cough up th cash and see it on the big screen - I don't think I would have given it more then **½ on video.

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

Tonight some guy was commenting loudly on everything in the movie, even repeating lines after they were spoken! Do these people have no manners or consideration for others at all? Grrr!

I hate people at the movies! It seems to be my destiny to always, always, end up next to Mr Big Mouth Who Needs To Comment on Everything or Ms I Need To Shovel Pop Corn Down My Throat The Whole Movie... Or is it just me being too sensitive and not very tolerant?

Carolus

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex


I hate people at the movies! It seems to be my destiny to always, always, end up next to Mr Big Mouth Who Needs To Comment on Everything or Ms I Need To Shovel Pop Corn Down My Throat The Whole Movie... Or is it just me being too sensitive and not very tolerant?

Carolus

Id say your being a wee bit too oversensitive but I agree with the comments parts, let 'em keep them down to a minimum but as for popcorn eating women, better that they eat popcorn then be bi@tching all the while!!

But then again thats acceptable (not the bi@tchin but the eating popcorn!)

Many women "feel-the-need_to-shove down-popcorn-in-their-throat" could have many a dual-meaning, but we will just let that comment slide................

Peace

Grandpa Troll

[Zero]

No but Im going to see the highly anticipated "Masterbater and *** ender" the porno parody of this film's title.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Carolus Rex


I hate people at the movies! It seems to be my destiny to always, always, end up next to Mr Big Mouth Who Needs To Comment on Everything or Ms I Need To Shovel Pop Corn Down My Throat The Whole Movie... Or is it just me being too sensitive and not very tolerant?

Carolus

then never go watch a movie with a big fat brother. Miss out on all the fun or watch the movie at your home when it comes out on DVD.

[Dis]

I only see matinee movies. I find there is less chance of annoying people if there are only 5 or 10 people in the entire theatre.

A problem we have here in Las Vegas is many if not most of our theaters are inside casinos. One time this annoying drunk guy game into the movie theater. Thankfully he left after a few minutes.

[Grandpa Troll]

I enjoyed this. although not necessarily earth-shattering, it was however enjoyable

I enjoy Russel Crowes depiction and illustration of what he or the diorector thought a ships captain should be.

I found it brilliant that the idea of "cloaking" as a whaler was done and yes we have an open end.........................

to the movie, entertaining and well worth the $8.00 for a few hours of time spent away from life turmoil....

I give it 3.75 of 5 stars....


Peace

Grandpa Troll

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by JohnT
Given that ones perspective is from a boat, proper "perspective" would've had a sway to the camera throughout the entire film.

Actually, if you spend enough time on one, you don't notice, and the things you're generally interested in are moving the same way you are - or else you have more things on your mind at the moment.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Troll
I found it brilliant that the idea of "cloaking" as a whaler was done and yes we have an open end.........................


Peace

Grandpa Troll

I loved the movie and will see it again - but then again, I'm a tall ship / sailing warship freak.

The whaler bit was cute, but totally implausible - any warship crew would have spotted the running rigging differences between a commercial vessel and a ship of war.

The Acheron was based on the USS Constitution and it's sister class of frigates - when I first saw it at the beginning of the movie, I was 95% sure, because the sale and hull profile were unique to that class, but later on in the scene where the two seamen present the captain with a framing model, that cinched it. If you ever wanted to see what the Constitution would have looked like under sail, that was it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Ned
I saw the movie yesterday. Crowe does a wonderful job. The ships cannon duels are very realistic, but the action scenes where people are firing cannons or getting blown up or fighting hand to hand are so short and chaotic as to be unitelligible. I don't know what the director was trying to portray other than chaos. If that was his intent, he succeeded.

Also, one gets a very good flavor of what it was like abort a British warship in that era.

I'd rate the film 4 out of 5 stars -- about twice as good as Matrix Rev.

Boarding actions were short, sharp, and confused in the extreme. Lots of powder smoke in the eyes, hard to distinguish friends and foes moving seemingly randomly, Marines in the tops shooting down (and hopefully in the delay between the trigger pull, and the actual arrival of that little lead ball, you won't have moved where your enemies' head had just been. )

The warship flavoring was actually understated. No slop buckets, no towed laundry (dead astern, so when you empty the slop buckets, you get **** and piss in your "clean" clothes" and they had the luxury of fresh food most of the time, not the common long distance ration of a pound of salt tripe, a pound of onions and a quart of beer a day. The incident with the sailor drunk on grog was also a little off - grog was (at least in the US Navy, which I'm sure learned from the Royal Navy) poisoned with tobacco and turpentine, so that if any man snuck in too many extra rations, the sweating, puking, dizzy dog would be obvious, and could be promptly flogged back into shape. Of course, you have to be a grognard to want those kind of details in the movie.

[Verto]

Saw this last night. 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.

Nice job by Crowe and cast. Good character depth, nice development.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
The whaler bit was cute, but totally implausible - any warship crew would have spotted the running rigging differences between a commercial vessel and a ship of war.

IIRC, they had smoke coming from the ship to disguise that. Damn it! I'll have to see the movie again now to find out if I'm right. I'm probably wrong though.

BTW, was I the only one impressed by the opening engagement between the two ships. It amazed me to no end.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
The script ranges from acceptable to really bad, and the amount of cliches is really astounding. I mean, there's only so many salty dogs muttering about curses I can take in modern cinema.

It may be modern cinema, but it's portraying a ship of war in 1805. Common sailors of the era were scum (they still are, but now they can take showers occasionally ) - petty criminals trying to escape the law, dregs of port towns pressed into service, debtors and other desperate sorts. I don't know if you've ever crewed any form of tall ship, but it's hard work - and I've done it for fairly short periods under relatively luxurious conditions, with no possiblity of being lashed, and with real food and toilets. In those days, it was stinking, brutish work in close quarters, among the most ignorant of peasants. So one wouldn't expect them to hold forth on the latest in philosophy and politics.

The ludicrous notion that a single French frigate operating in the Pacific would be enough to tip the balance of the war was also a laughable stretch.

For one thing, the movie didn't quite say that. The dialog was "could tip the balance" not "would" and the notion is far from absurd. This was months before Trafalgar and the breaking of the will, if not the theoretical seapower, of the combined French-Spanish fleet. England had precious little foreign commerce with most of Europe under Napoleon, and the former colonies still somewhat hostile. A large and growing amount of English commerce was in the Pacific with the British East India Company and otherwise. A warship of 44 guns on the loose, unopposed, with all those known ports to raid and no reliable communication between them, would have been devastating to future English commerce in the following year or two at a minimum. At the least, that would be a valid assumption while the French and Spanish fleets were in being, and the English perception that Napoleon was preparing to invade England was dominant in English strategic planning.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
IIRC, they had smoke coming from the ship to disguise that. Damn it! I'll have to see the movie again now to find out if I'm right. I'm probably wrong though.

The smoke was to look like the ship was rendering blubber. All whalers smoked like that once they'd caught a whale, but the rigging is undisguisable - standing rigging as well, but the running rigging differences are more apparent at a distance. They did change the sail plan to some extent to more closely resemble a whaler, but the rigging was still there. In theory, you could have an arrogant and greedy captain and officers (and nobody would question them), but I'd expect a bit more professionalism - the cost of failure at sea in those days was to become shark****. I know I'm weird, but I spotted the sail plan and hull form and ID'd it as a United States class frigate (the Constitution's type) in an instant at the beginning, against a background of cloud and fog. I'm an amateur hobbyist two centuries later - those guys were professionals who did it for a living, and misidentification could be fatal.

BTW, was I the only one impressed by the opening engagement between the two ships. It amazed me to no end.

It was very well done overall - the bit about the boats and kedge anchors (I think) was a subtle tribute to the Constitution's "Great Pursuit" "victory" in evading a five ship British squadron with the weather gage. The sense of the enemy guns coming in and clearing the decks was very well done cinematically - but a bit off technically. Even the best gunner's mates of the era couldn't be that consistently accurate at the initial engagement range shown in the movie, which I made to be about 1000 meters. You really had to close to about 400 meters before highly accurate gunnery was possible, and once you laid off to a beam reach to get your battery on the other ship, roll was pretty tremendous and the range opened up over time, so repeatable accuracy with the gun battery would mean each gun firing virtually simultaneously, or timed on the waves to reach the same relative roll position adjusted for range. The actual rate of fire was in between those two. That was the only technical issue I had with it, but from a filming perspective it wouldn't have had the same effect to have some wild variance in the level at which the shells came in.