Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 July 28

= July 28 =

Do foreign movies always have an North American/British distributor?
And do all English/Scottish movies have a North American distributor? They seem to use paramount alot...... Venustar84 (talk)
 * Well, define "foreign"... Also, many movies made outside of North America or the British Isles never get distributed to theatres there. So, no, not every move has a North American or British distributor.  -- Jayron  32  01:04, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Some films and TV shows have distribution in multiple markets from their inception, often because they're co-created or co-financed by multinational media organisations. The rights to some others get bought before they're finished, because of industry connections and word of mouth. But the regional rights for lots of others are traded at film festivals like Cannes and Sundance, or at conferences like MIPTV or Mipcom. People with films and TV shows to sell will exhibit them there, and prospective buyers (national and regional distributors, and TV networks) will decide what to buy. Regional distributors (whose business depends on their understanding the local tastes and mores of their target market) will choose what they think will work; and some things that are successful in one market will be unappealing (and thus sell cheaply, or not at all) in others. A case in point is the curious case of Breaking Bad in the UK - its first two seasons were shown on Channel Five (where it went mostly unnoticed) and after that no-one in the UK showed it at all (ref). -- Finlay McWalterᚠTalk 12:13, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

List of movie directors (active today) who hate CGI
Which famous directors who are still making movies have said that they hate CGI and only use traditional special effects like puppets, models, matte painting, camera tricks, etc? I know Terence Malick didn't use CGI for his cosmic sequences in "Tree of Life" and I believe Quentin Tarantino has also forsworn CGI, which is interesting because his good friend and collaborator Robert Rodriguez seems to use nothing but CGI.--24.228.94.244 (talk) 05:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Not an answer, but I bet what those directors really mean is they won't use CGI at it's current technology level. Presumably, at some point in the future, it will progress to the point where the end result will be indistinguishable from any other method.  The same is true in many other fields, like digital photography versus film and digital audio versus vinyl. StuRat (talk) 17:29, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * You've hit upon the problem. CGI is nothing more than high-tech cartooning, and is blatantly obvious on the screen. In fact, the average "action film" looks like a video game, not like anything real. Which is presumably the point - gamers are used to those types of graphics. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:40, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I watched the whole of Life of Pi without realizing that the animals were CGI. I could not understand how they filmed those scenes in the boat. --Viennese Waltz 12:30, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm a gamer (but not a famous director), and I find movies entirely shown in either blue or yellow "lighting" almost unwatchable. Most games don't do that, and I can't comprehend why most movies started thinking it was a good idea. Gotten to the point where I'll think "Hey, that looks decent!' simply because it's not completely blue and yellow. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:13, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I think the reason for the darkness is to hide certain details, whether it's CGI or traditional techniques. There's a reason late-70s films like Star Wars and Superman had so many night or black sky scenes: It was to hide wires. On the other hand, CGI is "cheating". There's a scene in Superman where he flies away from Lois' balcony and then Clark Kent shows up at her door seconds later. Easily done with CGI. But how did they do that? Well, with good ol' fashioned rear projection. Fake, but looked real. CGI pretty much always looks fake. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:15, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * It's not the darkness for me, it's the blueness, particularly next to the orangeness. In moderation, it'd be fine, but every action trailer I see does it, non-stop. Just for the sake of it, I guess. Superman's cool with me, but not this Man of Steel guy. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
 * OK now we know which Wikipedia editors hate CGI. Peter Jackson uses plenty of CGI but says he prefers practical effects and only uses CGI when nothing else could work. (Contrast George Lucas who used it for almost everything, even stuff that would've been easy to film practically.) The Lord of the Rings movies did several new types of camera tricks that hadn't been done before (moving forced perspective comes to mind).
 * Werner Herzog has ranted against CGI for a long time, and not (as Stu says) just because it isn't good enough yet. He says it violates his idea of what cinema should be- capturing and illuminating imagery from the real world. CGI betrays the trust between the viewer and the director that what is seen on screen is something that actually happened when they were filming. He talks about this often when discussing Fitzcarraldo, in which he pulled a full-sized steam ship over a mountain, which could've easily been done with miniatures. I'm sure you could find lots and lots of "auteur"-type filmmakers who have this attitude. They would be against basically all "special" visual effects, not just CGI. Staecker (talk) 12:16, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Doing everything with life-sized real objects isn't always possible. First, you need the kind of budget they had in Cleopatra, which nearly bankrupted the studio despite being the highest grossing film of the year.  Then you need items where a full-sized model is possible.  How could you do the Death Star in Star Wars ?


 * I think the real issue is good versus bad special effects, not practical versus CGI. We've all seen non-CGI special effects that were laughable, like a battleship on fire that looks like a bathtub toy filled with flaming lighter fluid, or a monster suit with a clearly visible zipper, or the bad claymation of a Sinbad film.  Meanwhile, other films feature practical effects that are astounding, like the seamless opening of the spaceship in The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Well, the same differences occur in CGI, and we will see more good CGI as the technology progresses, but no doubt some rank amateurs will continue to make crappy CGI pics, too.


 * There is another issue with cutting edge visuals, though, whether practical or CGI. The directors sometimes rely on those effects to sell their film, and don't bother with silly things like a plot or dialog. StuRat (talk) 12:47, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This whole forum discussion raises an interesting question that I'm surprised nobody's asked: Which famous directors who are still making movies have said that they hate CGI and only use traditional special effects like puppets, models, matte painting, camera tricks, etc? Staecker (talk) 12:39, 30 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Can someone point to or explain why Peter Jackson's LotR movies look so terribly washed out, never fully saturated in RGB at the same time, while other movies like the Narnia CGI ones are brilliantly colored? As for hating CGI, what I can't stand is physically impossible things that jar the eye, like a person jumping off a building then falling to the ground faster than the acceleration of gravity (I think Cat Woman did this) or the mummy in The Mummy opening his jaw so wide his skin would tear and his bones would crumble. μηδείς (talk) 17:42, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Forfeiting games based on misrepresentations?
I recently watched She's the Man where Viola was allowed to continue playing in her game even after she disclosed that she was not her brother Sebastian (who she had been pretending to be). Leaving aside the issue of gender, I began wondering: in real life, if such a situation were to occur, would the fact that the player misrepresented their identity (e.g. a person whose real name is John Doe playing under an alias, Richard Roe) be sufficient grounds to forfeit the game(s) that the player had participated in? 69.120.134.125 (talk) 06:05, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * This will depend on the rules of the game in question. Richard "Jim" Rathmann and his brother James "Dick" Rathmann come immediately to mind, and there may be other examples, but, in general, ringers are banned in any sporting competition.  There's a difference, of course, between pretending to be somebody else and competing under a professional name which isn't the one on your birth certificate.  Tevildo (talk) 07:35, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * And not just the rules of the game itself but the rules of the organization under which the game is being held. As an example, in major league baseball, you have to be under contract, and the contract has to have been approved by MLB. Sometimes players will fudge the facts. Tony Oliva kind of assumed the identity of his younger brother. But he was a productive enough player that fibbing about his identity was ultimately no big deal. The bottom line to the OP's question would have to be whether the player in question was technically eligible to play in the game under their true identity. If not, there is indeed a risk of forfeiture. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:29, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The NHL has a rule specifically addressing player eligibility. Any goal scored when the player is on the ice is void, but only if people notice a the next stoppage of play after the goal is scored. Mingmingla (talk) 17:45, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I read that rule as referring to the same stoppage in play caused by the goal being scored. --50.100.189.29 (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You're right. That's what I meant to say given that a goal is a stoppage. Mingmingla (talk) 23:44, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Kind of like an appeal play that requires defensive vigilance, or batting out of order. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:57, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * These issues are not limited to professional sports. The American Contract Bridge League sets out these conditions (PDF, 5 pages) for its tournaments.  Impersonation is not specifically addressed, but much of the first page addresses eligibility criteria based on the person's tournament history, and it says that the director in charge of an event has authority to "resolve any issue not specifically covered".  It's reasonable to assume that if a player was found to be using a false identity, they would be treated as ineligible and any masterpoints they won would be forfeited. --50.100.189.29 (talk) 21:45, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * See the story behind Danny Almonte at the 2001 Little League World Series, a rather sordid tale about a child who was used by adults who should have known better, and the earlier 1992 Little League World Series, whereby another team was disqualified due to rampant misrepresentation about the participants. -- Jayron  32  02:01, 29 July 2014 (UTC)


 * Apparently the rules were pretty lax for rowing in 1900, when some seven-year-old from a different country replaced a fat Dutchman, won an Olympic gold medal and vanished forever. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:29, 2 August 2014 (UTC)


 * South African athlete, Caster Semenya, was subjected to gender testing after winning the 2009 World Championships. Doubts were raised as to whether she was misrepresenting her sex in order to compete.  She was denied the opportunity to compete for almost a year, before she was cleared to return to international competition.  Astronaut (talk) 14:36, 3 August 2014 (UTC)