Mr.Row

I don't know if anyone saw "and starring Pancho Villa as himself" or whatever it was called, Bruce Beresford film. Watching it I was wincing at what had to be a film that was digitally scanned. There is something about these people that work on the digital intermediates that makes them want to manipulate the image to a point that makes the tools use (DI) so obvious. The non manipulated images in the DVD's featurette looked like film and looked fantastic. Contrast manipulations and digital filters make the image look like...well, a digital image. They look like music videos. I've seen the Lustre on a film make a crap film look like an 80 million dollar spectacle, but some people go overboard.

I heard that 2 of the top Australian cinematographers are so dyslexic that they are basically functionally illiterate, can't remember exactly who, I think maybe Russel Boyd and McAlpine. They (whomever they actually are) have their wives read the scripts for them. God knows what would happen these days if passing the SAT and getting a film degree were requisite accomplishments for people like this, oh wait....

I was talking to an australian, and he said that the Oz film community "hates" Baz Luhrman because none of the crew of Moulin Rouge (and he seemed to mean technical crew, gaffers etc.) was given "points". He said "in america, they make much more money because they get points in the film". Is this true??? Gaffers get gross points? Sounded like poop to me. I told him Australians get paid less because they are a primitive species.