Closer

[Guest C.L. Washington Jr.]

I personally didn't care for the every "couple" scene it was a couple of years down the line, but I thought the underlying subtext of the story was powerful. It showed the the character's battles within themselves and with each other superbly....... I may see it again. Anyone else see it?

 

C.L.

[Matthew Poliquin]

One viewing was enough for me. If I wanted to see a stage play . . . I would have gone to one. I did find it interesting that in each scene the characters were just ending one relationship, and on the verge of starting the next, never allowing the audience to see the actual relationship. The performances were rather week as well. Everyone but Portman just seemed to be going through the motions of acting.

 

Matt Poliquin

DP/AC/Maker of rent

[Greg Gross]

Hello C.L. Washington JR.,

I was going to go see "Closer" today but held off due to terrible Xmas

traffic jams. In December issue of American Cinematographer article

on "Closer" entitled "Modern Romance and Period Pop". The DP who

shot the film is Stephen Goldblatt ASC. Its a very good article,you should

try to read it if you can. Of course the director was Mike Nichols and he's

a great director. Mr. Goldblatt states Mr. Nichols and him have a close work-

ing relationship. To me that is just great, I mean two guys that work together

and create a feature film. For this film Mr. Goldblatt used the Kodak Look Man-

ager System. This is a system that can be used to obtain color correction while

you're making the film. Mr. Goldblatt shot the film on Kodak Vision2-500T(18)

and Fuji 500D. He used Arri cameras,his lenses were S4 Cooke Primes,a Cooke

18-100mm T3 zoom and an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm T2.8 zoom. He shot it

in the standard 1.85:1 aspect. He says that Mr. Nichols is fanatical about keeping

images real. That they shot either on location or on sets that were very closely

modeled on reality. Mr. Goldblatt says that within those constraints, Mr. Nichols

gave him every chance to be expressive. He says that in his hotel room he had

a 24" monitor(calibrated) and the "Timer" at Deluxe Laboratories(London) had an

identical calibrated monitor. He documented his key setups with a specially cali-

brated single-reflex lens and a Canon digital camera. Greg

[Greg Gross]

"Closer" continued:

 

Mr. Goldblatt states that he would take his representative stills during the

day. He would come back to his hotel and download them. Then adjust the

color using the Kodak software in "Film Legal" fashion. This restricts the ad-

justment of the digital image to a film color space instead of a digital color

space. After he would adjust the images to his satisfaction he would e-mail

them to color timer Clive Noakes at Deluxe Laboratories. He states that the

respective images on their monitors(Clive's and his) were very close. He said

that from day one he could give the director a very clear idea as to how the

film was going to look. I really am very excited now about seeing this film.

I probably will get to go see it next weeK. Someone commented that it has a

play look. The film is based on the original play by Patrick Marber. Mr. Gold-

blatt staes that he strove for heightened naturalism while shooting the film.

He compares it to Carnal Knowledge, he says its obsessed with sexual poli-

tics.

Greg