I previewed Hellboy last night.
I found it to be a fun little summer movie (a little early, though).
POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!
The characters were all made interesting and the SFX didn't look as bad as they did in the trailers.
There were a couple of nice scenes. Watch for the rooftop part.
Abraham kinda stole the show for me. And I was a little upset that he suddenly stopped appearing near the end.
Hellboy, himself, even had a fun personality and became a likeable charater.
However, I do think most film-goers are gonna do a "what the...?" when it comes to the fantastic elements in the movie as it seems almost everyone has some power or are freaks. If it wasn't for my conditioning from comics, I would felt a little disoriented.
The villains were all done well, too. Each one had their own characteristics and were interesting.
Parts I didn't like:
SPOILERS FOR SURE!!!
The beginning. While it started off relatively straight-faced, it's thrown into camp at the last minute as Hellboy appears as an Elmo-like little version of himself. And where did those candy bars come from, anyway?
The ending. Very anti-climatic for me. I was expecting a bit more from the "boss".
Overall, I give it a B-. It is a fun movie and nothing more. Funner than Dawn of the Dead for sure. And makes an interesting Double-Feature for Passion.
I got to see the movie at a screening on monday night (Yay me!) and liked it quite a bit.
I was a bit annoyed with the review in today's Philadelphia Daily News, not so much with the review of the film, but in a side-bar about the source material, the writer takes a shot at JB's scripting! Da noive!
Editted to add: (you can read it at philly.com, but you have to register (no charge) first)
"Hellboy first appeared in "Next Men" No. 21 (currently valued at $25) and then received his first limited series, which has been collected as "Hellboy: Seed of Destruction" ($17.95). The story on which much of the movie is based, this is the best jumping-on point for those who are willing to get into the comic series.
The collection contains the first official story and you will get introduced to Hellboy and what he's about here. It's a very nice stand-alone read - an entertaining action tale - with beautiful artwork by creator Mike Mignola. The only drawback is the scripting by comic legend John Byrne, who is off his game here.
Much of the dialogue is cliched or stilted. But the strength of the story in general and the freshness of the unique hero in particular manage to overcome that weakness."
This message has been edited by wiredemon on Apr 2, 2004 12:01 PM
I'll go with you, Diddy. Wives are overrated anyway.
Brendan Howard
The Mischeivious Mike N. (Login ArgentFox) Byrne Victim
Re: HELLBOY reviews are looking good...
April 2 2004, 12:02 PM
I plan on hitting a matinee today, so as someone who doesn't read Hellboy at all - Mignola's art bugs me - I go in knowing only what I've seen in the trailers and on the web site.
We'll see if I like it.
Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis Good Judgement comes from Experience and Experience comes from... Bad Judgement.
"The only drawback is the scripting by comic legend John Byrne, who is off his game here."
Wow...the only Hellboy story I liked was the one JB scripted.I thought he was ON HIS GAME in that book!
I was in the comic shop the other day talking about Hellboy with the owner and a few other people and none of them even new JB scripted the first mini-series! Even though he had the Seed Of Destruction trade on his counter front and center for everyone to see.
Saw it today and thought it was a solid, if somewhat quiet movie.
The characters are all dead on. Nice, snappy, dialogue. Good action. The tone is just right.
However, the plot seemed to run around in circles a little too much. There seemed to be not quite enough development of the characters as the screen was crammed with them. For brevity's sake, some of these characters were unnecessary.
Overall, I liked it...just not as much as I hoped.
I'm going to see it tonight with my better half if I can leave work on time. I've intentionally avoided reading the books until after I see the movie. I'm going into the movie with only a basic familiarity with the character, but I've found that if I see a movie and then read the book I can still enjoy both. If I read the books and then see the movie, the movie usually collapses under my great expectations. This way I can appreciate each for their own merits.
Ok, I just got back from the matinee and I have to say I enjoyed this film. I'd have liked about 5 minutes more at the ending, but I wasn't terribly let down with how they ended it.
I hope it does enough Box Office to rate a sequel because I want to see more of Abe and Hellboy. I don't know if they were spot on as related to the books but they were great film characters.
Best comedic scene - Hellboy and the kid on the roof.
The thing I appreciated the most was that they didn't feel like they had to explain every single plot device and every character involved was competant in their field.
Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis Good Judgement comes from Experience and Experience comes from... Bad Judgement.
I just about walked out of the movie. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
I really love the Hellboy comics...heck, I even bought the GURPS role-playing game just for the short story. I don't want to say it was the worst movie I've ever seen, but it wasn't very good. I admit though, that I'm not a big fan of book and comic adaptations.
An amalgam of reviews put together by Showbizdata.com:
Critics who still like comic books seem to like Hellboy; those who don't, don't. The Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert is one who does, observing that the movie is "not only based on a comic book, but also feels like a comic book. It's vibrating with energy, and you can sense the zeal and joy in its making." Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times compares the movie to the "drizzly Gothic ambience" of Mike Mignola's comic-book renderings and says that director Guillermo del Toro also "lets loose with an all-American, vaudevillian rambunctiousness that makes the movie daffy, loose and lovable." Rick Groen in the Toronto Globe and Mail leads off his review by remarking, "If you like your movies inspired by comic books -- and who among us does not -- then Hellboy is quite the little treat." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post regards the movie as "surprisingly enjoyable, as adaptations of cult comic books go, thanks to a sense of humor all too rare in the genre, winning performances by Ron Perlman and Selma Blair, and a sweet romance of the kind that made Spider-Man a richer experience than its competitors." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal says the film "is a perfect fit in the category of instant classic, and, not incidentally, fits the profile of super-profitability." On the other hand, Bob Strauss asks in his review in the Los Angeles Daily News: "Why does it feel like so many other comic book movies?" then answers, "The devil knows." Claudia Puig in USA Today writes that del Toro "has crafted a fiery action picture destined to please fans of other comics-turned-adventure flicks such as X-Men. The rest of us will find ourselves left out in the cold."
I enjoyed it. A great looking picture that adheres to Mignola's visuals and story ideas to an extent I would have thought unlikely. Perleman is terrific. A lesser actor would have been swallowed whole by all those latex prosthetics. Nice to see a picture like this shot in something like Academy ratio and not feel obliged to go widescreen. Somehow it made everything seem bigger.
I liked it. Most of the changes from the comic seem to have specific film-oriented purposes and some were real improvements. And it seemed to hold together plot-wise, though perhaps my familiarity with the comic changes my perspective from the average movie-goer. Good stuff!
I saw it and liked it. I actually have a unique perspective since I've never read a Hellboy comic before and knew virtually nothing about the character. (All that has changed since I've slammed Ebay looking for back issues after I saw the movie.)
Anyway, I saw it with two civilians who liked it as well and were actually looking forward to a sequel. It was actually more light-hearted than I expected, but not in a way that would seem to mock comic books or comic fans.
I saw a very late showing and the theater was PACKED with what looked like civilians and there were many scences that got great reactions from the audience. This movie will definitly be a financial success.
What I meant to say was "unique compared to the rest of the board". . .
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Not even that.
Please, please, please, please, please! This is one of my most aggravating pet peeves. "Unique" means "the only one of its kind". Something cannot be "very unique", it cannot be "kinda unique" it cannot be "unique as compared to something else".
Sorry, I had no idea this was a pet peeve of yours and I didn't meant to be irksome. Its such a reflex to use words like "unique" improperly. At least I didn't say "ironic".
Let us never forget, however, the Great Lie of Hollywood -- that many "widescreen" movies are, in fact, shot Academy Ratio and then "matted" for showing. When you see a movie directed by Tim Burton, James Cameron, Stanley Kubrick and a host of others, you are often seeing less on the movie screen than you will see on your TV!
This has long demonstrated for me the (justifiable?) contempt H'wood has for its audience. When TV came along and started sucking away the audience, "widescreen" was invented as a means of combating the Box -- but it was not until years after the introduction of "widescreen" movies that a means of actually creating wider images was invented. Before that, what you saw in the theater was (as now) actually less than what you saw at home.
I always check the video releases, to see if the "widescreen" version is, in fact, matted.
>>widescreen" movies are, in fact, shot Academy Ratio and then "matted" for showing<<
True. And sometimes --when the matte isn't built into the print-- the aspect ratio varies from theater to theater depending on thoroughness of the exhibitor or the set-up of the room.
An aside: A couple of years ago I visited a friend of mine who was directing a movie on the Sony stages. He was shooting in anamorphic widescreen (much to the concern of the studio). Strangest damn lens I've ever had the privilege of seeing mounted on that camera!
[sp.]
This message has been edited by fronaldmiller on Apr 3, 2004 1:19 PM
He was shooting in anamorphic widescreen (much to the concern of the studio). Strangest damn lens I've ever had the privilege of seeing mounted on that camera!
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Many directors -- James Cameron for one -- prefer the matted version because they can more closely control the degree of distortion in the projected image. The anamorphic lens does tend to wow things out to the sides.
So what do I look for on the DVD cover to tell if it is true widescreen or matted?
********
Sometimes it says as much, in so many words, down in the fine print at the bottom of the back of the package. Sometimes it has some variant on "reformatted to fit your screen" -- tho this latter is not always dependable, as it can mean an actual widescreen movie that has been trasnfered to video as a "pan and scan".
It's kind of hit and miss, and depends in large part on how you feel about letterboxing. For movies that were really shot widescreen, I much prefet the letterboxed version. For those that were matted, I would rather have a full screen.
One way to get a feel for this is to keep an eye on the trailers when they are shown on TV. I noticed the trailers for "Titanic" filled the screen, for instance, but when shows like ET would show a "widescreen" clip, parts of the image were cropped top and bottom.
It all comes down to how important you think the "director's vision" is. If you want to see what you saw in the theater, go for the letterboxed version no matter how it was shot.
(The first time I saw "Peewee's Big Adventure" was on TV. When Peewee pulls the infinite chain out of his bicycle satchel, the rest of the chain could be seen feeding up thru the bottom. I thought this was Tim Burton playing with Hollywood conventions -- then I found out the movie had been shown in a "matted" widescreen format in theaters, so this had been covered. As I learned more about the matting process I came to realize how many such "goofs" in other films by other directors -- like the mike being in the shot -- were actually the result of the "matt" being removed for TV and video versions. Curiously, the last time I caught a few minutes of Burton's "Batman" on cable, I noticed they were showing a "pan and scan" version of the "matted" image!)
Tonight's box office will be a powerful indicator. If Saturday's take is higher it could bode well for Big Red. It appears as if B. Diddy's estimate yesterday is in line with the estimated gross. Will his prediction be true on next weekends fall-off as well?
Thanks JB. As I read your response it jogged my memory of someone else explaining that many Director's Mistakes like you describe were actually projectionist mistakes because the projectionist is in charge of using the proper lense and frame according to how the film was shot.
I personally try to get all my films in widescreen because Pan & Scan bugs me. The first time I saw my DVD of Seven Samurai I stopped it and checked to see if I had screwed up and bought some Full Screen P&S version because there wasn't any letterboxing. Turns out, it was originally shot in 1.33:1.
Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis Good Judgement comes from Experience and Experience comes from... Bad Judgement.
Saw the movie this afternoon. Nice turnout from all ages. While I have only read about three comics and one tpb of Hellboy I really enjoyed it. My favorite scene is with the boy on the roof. The ending was a little cut off for me but I give it a nice thumbs up all the way around.
Saw it last night with the wife. I loved it. It was a lot of fun and really done well. My civilian better half really got a kick out of it, but used a curious word to describe it: Cute!
-regarding the "matting" process for both production and exhibition.
"Open Matte" is the process used where the entire normal 35 mm negative space is exposed and printed, then matted in the theater to the hopefully correct aspect ratio. This is where most often one will notice boom mikes and such during screening.
Many directors such as Cameron prefer to use the Super-35 method, where in fact more negative then in open matte is exposed, then optically printed to the desired aspect ratio. Unlike open matte, Super35 cannot be exhibited. Super35 are printed to an anamorphic frame, which removes the lens curvature artifacting that occurs when shooting in native anamorphic.
I actually like some of those artifacts as so many of the best looking films have been shot in anamorphic.
The problem I think that many people may have with current anamorphic presentations is that very few directors today seem to be able to compose for that frame.
RT
Edited because I am a maroon
This message has been edited by Rtaylor01 on Apr 4, 2004 3:31 AM
Hyde Pierce did an excellent job with his line delivery, I had an instant sense of Abe's character from his first words.
I think the Civilian Wife had it right, this movie is very cute. Cute, charming, funny, insightful, and smart for its genre. Much of that comes from the performances of Ron Perlman as Hellboy and Doug Jones/David Hyde Pierce as Abe Sapien.
Like I've said before, I hope this makes enough money to rate a sequel because I left wanting more.
Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis Good Judgement comes from Experience and Experience comes from... Bad Judgement.
"Also, on matted widescreen DVD's and such, is there any websites that list true widescreen DVD's?"
Most DVD's list the aspect ratio on the case. Any DVD that lists an aspect ratio of 1:1.66 is an open matte film. Films made before 1940 that list 1:1.33 are in the original academy format.
However some films that were shot open matte have been transferred at the current academy ratio of 1:1.85 as usually that is the intended framing.
Films prior to 1984 that list 1:2.35 aspect ratio were shot anamorphic and are true widescreen. Many films after that date (including all of Cameron's films other than Aliens) were shot in Super35 and optically printed to an anamorphic 1:2.35 frame. There are no films shot in Super35 that are printed to 1:1.85 as it would be an unnecessary expense. A tell tale sign of true anamorphic is that lens flares are not circular but oval. The only reason more films are not shot Super35 is that due to the additional optical step it is very difficult to prevent grain, unless the negative is exposed and processed under extremely exact conditions.
*note: the Super35 frame is almost square, due to using negative space normally reserved for the optical soundtrack added in printing, as well as having virtually no "gutters" between frames, as open matte and hard matter 1.1:85 do, which is why it cannot be exhibited in this format.
For more information, www.hometheaterforum.com is a good place to start.
I finally got to go see Hellboy last night with my wife. I really enjoyed the movie and thought that Ron Perlman was great in the role. I also liked John Hurt and the character, of Abe Sapien. He's one cool aquatic character and I thought I heard that voice before. The Nazi Assassin was both cool and spooky at the same time. His film was better than most of the previous comicbook-based movies that have come out.
I saw Hellboy last night...
"best comic book movie ever!"
I really enjoyed the movie and actually dreamed about it last night.
I AM going to see this little gem again.
GJ to Guillermo Del Toro for showing Hollywood how a comic moive can be done.
Wish HE could direct the next Hulk film.
Congrats to Mike Mignola as well- may this movie and its apparant success give him all the money and fame he deserves.
Dwayne
nothing to see here move on
Dwayne
nothing to see here move on
This message has been edited by Dwayne_Ferguson on Apr 5, 2004 9:48 AM
...with my girlfriend and we loved it. As a special bonus, The Movie Tavern(in South Arlington) had Lone Star comics giving away free copies of the .25 Hellboy comic "The Corpse". I picked up a couple for some friends who couldn't make it and waited until Saturday to see it.
I saw it with a couple of "straights" (my kids). The kids were bored out of their minds, as was half the audience.
I tried to seperate the part of myself that knew Hellboy from the Guy Who Just Likes Good Movies. About halfway through, I finally gave up. There are just so many plot holes and useless characters in this thing....so many missed opportunities.
Basically, it's two hours of Hellboy beating up tentacled monsters. Yawn.
>>The kids were bored out of their minds, as was half the audience.
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You know, not doubting your anecdote about the audience, but I thought this was interesting. I'm sure if you asked any of the people above who liked the movie, they would say the audience was cheering and excited.
And I'm sure nobody's lying. Perhaps people just tend to notice evidence which matches their notions. Or perhaps there is kind of a gestalt thing going on, where the attitude of the audience you are with affects your perception of the movie, and vice versa.
Keith: "I'm sure if you asked any of the people above who liked the movie, they would say the audience was cheering and excited."
I went to see "Hellboy" with a few friends. One friend and his wife were laughing at the funny parts and made other comments during the film that made me assume they were enjoying the film. Afterwards, they were telling me how much they disliked the film. Odd.
Yeah, you're right. There's no way I could know what half the audience was thinking, so I'll amend my comment. The row I was sitting in was filled with close to 12-15 people. Those closest to me spent most of the movie, shifting in their seats, yawning and whispering to one another. Not an obvious indictment of the film, I'll grant you, but the body language gave me the impression they were not enjoying it. When leaving, most people weren't lambasting the film, they were simply bored by it, by my impression.
Also, after the credits started at the end, Jeffrey Tambor had a small semi-comedic wrap up scene. Those in the audience who had stayed to watch it groaned as soon as it was over. Not a good sign.
I expect a huge drop off in the box office this weekend as word-of-mouth gets around. But I've been wrong before. I thought FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING was going to be a colossal failure after I saw it.
Mike Mignola was on NPR's Morning Edition yesterday talking about the influence of "Dracula" in his work. It's an audio link and I believe it will only be up for a few days. It's an interesting report. Also, I didn't know that it was not a hard "g" when pronouncing his last name.
It is amazing how different audiences can be in different parts of the country. The audience I saw the picture with clapped when the movie was over. I've only experienced this phenomenon on four other instances: In Star Trek II when the Reliant's shields were overridden by the Enterprise's bridge crew, the trailer for Star Wars Episode I, after Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and when ET came back to life.
When the Death Star exploded in Star Wars back in '77, and in ROTJ, and when R2 fixed the hyper drive in Empire. This happened more than once, on multiple viewings. I mean bigtime applause and cheers. I've heard smatterings of applause at a few other films, but never like at these films.
At the end of Matrix: Reloaded. They were loud and there were many. I've never seen anything else like it.
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Ironically, one of the two times I can remember seeing an audience cheer was for the teaser trailer for Matrix: Reloaded.
The other was during Star Trek Generations, when the Enterprise destroyed the Klingon Bird of Prey. Seems like a strange movie to cheer to, but the audience I watched it with was really into that movie.
I enjoyed the movie a lot, partially i think because I didn't go into my catacombs and unearth my HELLBOY back issues to re-read them. The last I had seen of HB was in the mid 80's, and I was floored by Migola's concepts and approach. I was curious on how they would portray HB in film, and I wasn't disappointed.
Someone had said that HB began as part of a Next Men storyline? I didn't realize that (or had forgotten it). Is this true?
Wow! Thanks for digging that one out for me, Matt!
<bows> I am not worthy! I am not worthy!
With all this time-traveling, sometimes it is difficult to remember what came out when. I swear though, this isn't as embarassing as when when I pushed my time pod to it's limits to see what 3,000,000,000,000 A.D. looked like, and forgot to take into account the perpetual galactic shift. It took forever to find Earth again. Literally.
But perhaps I may have said too much...
Current Topic - HELLBOY reviews are looking good...
