Fast Cuts, Slow Views (Herskowitz)
Fast Cuts, Slow Views by Richard Herskowitz (Virginia Film Festival; 2004) [ cache ] Early this summer, before the onslaught of summer blockbusters had completely destroyed his capacity to protest, Variety’s film critic Todd McCarthy described Stephen Sommers’ truly awful Van Helsing : Packed with nothing but big scenes and breathlessly paced in a way that suggests panic at the idea the audience might get bored if things were slowed and toned down even for a moment…Sommers knows how to startle an audience—he’s big into suddenly dropping hideous faces into the frame from above—but never develops any sense of creepiness or dread because he won’t take the time to do so. ( Variety, May 3, 2004 ) Less than a month later, another blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow , seemed determined to raise the audience’s consciousness about global warming. However, the filmmakers clearly felt it was necessary to speed things up. Dan Schrag, a Harvard paleoclimatologist acknowledged that the facts...
