Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#276 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Nov 16, 2013 2:29 pm

If you're not here to persuade anyone, what are you here for? Were you compelled to interrupt a positive discussion of the movie just to tell everyone at great length how much you think it sucks, with accompanying list of every aspect of it you think sucks? That's not where discussion grows, that's where it ends: in emphatic statements of opinion that give no indication they're open to being changed.

I think, TedW, that you aren't fully aware of your own tone. Here's a characteristic bit:
TedW wrote:And to argue the notion of the opening in each cut? Both of them are bad.
Thanks for that. It's good to know further conversation on the matter isn't needed and everyone can just stop talking now.

LavaLamp
Joined: Wed Jul 24, 2013 12:59 am

Re: Miami Vice (Mann, 2006)

#277 Post by LavaLamp » Sun Nov 17, 2013 12:12 am

oh yeah wrote:As unlikely as it seems, also, I'm far from alone in my adoration for Miami Vice. It seems like a large amount of film critics, particularly younger ones, really appreciate what Mann did; and the film ranked highly on countless best-of-00s lists by blogs and various other more prestigious publications (if this means anything, anyway). Like a lot of great films that baffled audiences upon release, I think consensus of it will only grow more positively with time.
I'm definitely one of those people who didn't like MV on my first viewing, but loved it when I re-watched it again recently. Back in '06 when it was released, I was big into '80's nostalgia, and went into the theatre thinking I would be watching a film with a lot of homages/nods to the original MV TV show. However, it turned out that it was completely different type of film. This was absolutely the right approach to take here, but I couldn't appreciate it at the time.

Now, it's become one of my favorite MM films - I rank it up there behind Heat & Thief.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#278 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:18 am

Anyone else think the film would have been better off if Mann just used the original "In The Air Tonight" as opposed to the crappy cover version?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#279 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:32 am

Now that’s a thread bump.

Werewolf by Night

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#280 Post by Werewolf by Night » Thu Jan 25, 2018 12:50 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Anyone else think the film would have been better off if Mann just used the original "In The Air Tonight" as opposed to the crappy cover version?
Probably? The music is kind of a mess in general in this film, especially in the opening nightclub scene, but I'm sure Mann thought it was clever to use a cover version of the song (which was already used memorably in the pilot episode of the TV series) since the movie is kind of a cover version of the TV show.

connor
Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:03 pm

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#281 Post by connor » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:09 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Anyone else think the film would have been better off if Mann just used the original "In The Air Tonight" as opposed to the crappy cover version?
Yes. Which is why I bought the non-director's cut version from the UK. That cover only plays over the end credits. I also dig how the theatrical cut just starts in the middle of the club scene, no explanation. Most of Mann's other films gained a little something in later cuts -- Miami Vice got worse.

The original John Murphy score is actually really good. Pretty sure that's what plays in the shoot-out in the theatrical version.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#282 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:59 pm

I think that in the theatrical cut what's used instead is one of James Newton Howard's un-used cues from Collateral. I recognized it when Howard's full score for that was released a few years ago.

I can understand why Mann maybe bristled at the idea of such a direct connection to the show, but if used in the right way it could have worked. Then again, whether or not it would have been as iconic as how it was used on the show would have weighed against what he hoped to have achieved with it.

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#283 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:22 pm

The theatrical cut is on Netflix and the transfer looks pretty bad in a couple scenes (namely some of the rooftop shots towards the beginning). Again I'm not too technical about it, but in several shots it looks like there's a thread superimposed over the image. Hopefully a 4K scan can get rid of that stuff.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#284 Post by dda1996a » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:36 pm

The movie looks like shit anyway, I doubt 8K will make it look good

MongooseCmr
Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 11:50 pm

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#285 Post by MongooseCmr » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:58 pm

I’m noticing a theme with you dda.

Personally I think Mann’s (and Soderbergh's) digital films look great. So much of digital strives for the clean flat look of tv or to just imitate film that all the imperfections of these mid-00s/iPhone shot films make them more visually compelling by comparison.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#286 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:02 pm

With the proviso that I like the look of the movie, the rooftop shots in particular have always been rough. I admit I fully don't understand the technical ins and outs, but my understanding is those shots were done with an extremely long shutter to keep the cityscape in the background and the actors in the foreground evenly lit while retaining as much depth of field as possible. (The normal thing to do would be to light the actors and expose for them, sacrificing visibility of the skyline.) The problem with a long shutter is that it sacrifices sharpness and introduces a smeariness to movement, and I think this is a big part of why Mann's recent films look so much different from the standard shot-on-video look, which doesn't exploit oddities of the format (like the ability to use a 360-degree shutter) and basically treats it like film. Most likely the rooftop shots also had some major gain boosting, which would further reduce the image quality.

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dda1996a
Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#287 Post by dda1996a » Fri Jan 18, 2019 3:54 pm

MongooseCmr wrote:
Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:58 pm
I’m noticing a theme with you dda.

Personally I think Mann’s (and Soderbergh's) digital films look great. So much of digital strives for the clean flat look of tv or to just imitate film that all the imperfections of these mid-00s/iPhone shot films make them more visually compelling by comparison.
I've longed voiced my opinion that film is significantly better looking than digital. I'm not even talking about film projected, which is a completely different experience, but even films shot on film and screened as DCP look vastly better.
But unlike Lynch or Fincher which manage to push digital to interesting places, Mann's experiments look like shit. This looked so awful (and I didn't care a bit for the film), which makes me sad as his earlier, shot on film movies are among my favorites (just compare Thief, Manhunter and Heat to Public Enemies, this and Blackhat)

nitin
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:49 am

Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#288 Post by nitin » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:45 pm

I prefer film to digital too but I really like the look he achieved with this and Collateral, in particular the lighting in the rooftop shots (especially when the lightning happens). In contrast, I hated what Lynch did aesthetically in Inland Empire (but I also really dislike the film) and am hit and miss with Fincher’s use of digital (also Soderbergh).

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#289 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:55 pm

I don't have a preference. Movies can still be relevant and masterful on celluloid, just as they can be visually scrumptious and massively theatrical on digital. Fincher and Denis Villeneuve are the guys I've been most impressed by on the movie side. I think the series Hannibal might be the best-looking series shot in it I can think of, even more than the last season of Twin Peaks, which was a massive improvement over Inland Empire.

I think the only mistakes Mann made with digital are when he did Public Enemies in it. I didn't mind it so much but friends of mine were turned off by the look of it, and I can't really disagree when something like this would have looked so much fuller on film. The mistakes I saw in watching MV on Netflix were maybe beyond his control, but I think it looks great (my overall feelings on the movie are much more mixed).

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John Cope
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Re: Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

#290 Post by John Cope » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:29 pm

I've always thought Vice was astonishingly beautiful, especially in terms of its color and lighting, and in particular exactly because Mann does not strive to emulate a film look but rather embraces what digital can distinctively do.

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