Vertigo def.Citizen Kane : Ah.. Finally the top seed has been eliminated. Citizen Kane never had a easy match except against Network. It's last three match margin as been just 5.
Taxi Driver def. Goodfellas : This one was never in doubt. At least for me.
12 Angry Men def. 2001: A Space Odyssey : This one was a real surprise to me. 2001 was leading by almost 10 votes at 70+ votes. But finally 12 is proved to be big enough than 2001 . Moreover 12 Angry Men is proving to be a big director hunter. 2 Kubricks and a Hitchcock is not a bad record. And let us see whether it can scalp another Hitchcock in the semis.
Psycho def. A Clockwork Orange : This was a real humdinger till the end. In the end Hitch made it. But sad to see, Kubrick is out of the competition now
i really don't get what is so special about Vertigo and Psycho, why people are voting them constantly. for me this can be only funny - Psycho to win over Pulp Fiction and A Clockwork Orange, or Vertigo over Citizen Kane and Shawshank Redemption. Hitchcock's movies are pretty similar and for nowadays they are overrated and predictable.
SF Match #1: (9) Vertigo def. (52) Taxi Driver by 42 - 40 Taxi Driver made almost a unbelievable comeback. In The last 20 votes 17 was for TD 1 was skipped. Only two was in favor of Vertigo but the lead Vertigo got in the initial stages was too good to eliminate it. Hard luck for Taxi Driver really.
SF Match #2: (87) 12 Angry Men def. (14) Psycho by 45 - 44 12 Angry Men continues its big director hunt. Psycho almost made it in the end with surge of late votes but 12AM held its fort firmly to make it to the finals.
A big congratulations to 12 Angry Men, Sydney Lumet and BIG BIG BIG thanks to all of our members who made this tournament a enormous success. Without your support we would have not had such an entertaining game.. Thanks again to all....!!!
Great finals and Great performance by 12 Angry Men.. It seemed Vertigo was the favorite before the finals, but 12 Angry Men, as it has previously done, went on to win against the odds. And Vertigo was the third Hitchcock film to be eliminated by 12AM. Vertigo had a great run, except against Taxi Driver it has won every matches without much trouble. But at the end, Fonda has beaten his real life friend Stewart. Till 92 votes they were in separable. In this SURVEY MONKEY site, for a free account only 100 responses were allowed. So I was wondering what would I have to do if both ended in 50 votes a piece. But fortunately 12 Angry Men won with a un-assailable score of 51 thus put an end to my worry..
THANKS ONCE AGAIN TO ALL FOR YOUR CONTINUOUS SUPPORT AND ENTHUSIASTIC PARTICIPATION...!!! :) :) :)
yes, thank's a lot Tommy. Even if 12 angry men definitely wouldn't be in my personal top 10 (RDPL55 had some nice arguments there). Of the movies competing 2001 is my personal winner, but de gustibus non est disputandum even if it is a lot of fun to do so nevertheless :D
Thanks Tommy for this tournament. 12 angry men was not at all my personnal favourite. At least 10 movies in the list were above it, especially the Kubrick's and the Hitch's, but it's the rule of the game :)
As the story goes, Lumet changes to lenses of longer focal lengths. That way the room seems smaller and the atmosphere is getting more and more claustrophobic. In addition to that, he shot the first third of the movie above eye level, to make us look down on the characters, then he shot at eye level and for the final third of the movie he shot below eye level so we can see the ceiling appears making us feel like the room is getting smaller.
Therefore, thanks to the change of lenses, it seems like the walls are closing on the characters, and thanks to the different camera angles, it seems like the ceiling is closing on the characters ! That's the reason why the viewer feels the tension rising during all the movie. For the final shot, Lumet said he used a wide-angle lens to "let us finally breathe"
If that's not great filming, I don't know what is.
Well that's the homework for lessons 1 ("use of the focal length") and 2 ("low angle and high angle shooting") from the school of cinema around the corner :)
The key information in my previous message was not the fact that he used focal length and different angles, it was the purpose of using them.
By using this rethoric, any movie that uses a zoom, a track shot or a long take has a bad cinematography because it's the first things you learn as a filmmaker. Go tell that to Welles, Hitchcock, Tarkovskiy and Kubrick. Whether you like it or not, Kaufman was an amazing director of photography.
Anyone interested in some other tournaments in one month time...
we can have IMDB 256 (top 250+6 of the movies that recently went out. It is just to make sure that the top teams dont get bye in the first round) or TSPDT top 256..
@theoffice, of course Lumet knows how to use a camera but nothoing new in it's way of using focal length... By the way I even prefer the way he uses it in another "filmed theatre movie" like "The Fugitive Kind". Look at directors like Welles, Ophüls, or even Kubrick or Mallick... I find thier way of using camera a bit more interresting... but it's only my opinion...