DORIAN GRAY, and what's wrong with Hollywood today

The upcoming remake of The Picture of Dorian Gray is still a ways off, but the studio has already released a clip showing how the did a lot of the special effects. While it's interesting to watch, it also showcases a couple of the big problems I have with modern Hollywood. Allow me to put on my old man hat and expound upon What's Wrong with Hollywood Today.

First, they show you too much in advance. Between all the online clips and trailers, by the time a movie comes out you're already kind of sick of it. Watch this clip, and you'll have seen most of Dorian Gray's big moments. Seriously, if you're at all interested in seeing this movie in theaters, you don't wanna watch this clip because it will spoil damn near everything.

Second, you can see just how crazy they got with the CGI here, and how much more fake everything looks after they pixel it all up. In the first part of the clip, you watch as they superimpose a hooded figure and a trunk near a dock, then they tweak the shading on the figure and tweak the dock so some of its posts are taller and the end of the dock is darker and they tweak and tweak until everything looks... tweaked. This fakey-ass shot probably cost a couple of million bucks, and it would've looked a heck of a lot better if they'd just changed the lighting on the actual set.

There are a few shots here where you can see how much CGI work they did on a building that I presume is Gray's home. We see them adding lots of soot to the building's exterior and giving the top story and roof a redesign. But again, it probably would have been a lot simpler and cheaper, and would have looked a lot better, if they had just found a real building with a top story they liked better, and sprayed the outside with a little faux soot. As it is, the building (and the London around it) is so tweaked-out, with every little detail made just as crisp as can be, that it looks nothing like the real world. A lot of modern filmmakers don't just gild the lily... They gild the whole darn garden!







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