Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
His weird camera work is actually so damn hard to pull off that Armageddon is in the Criterion Collection thanks to that (and probably a few other reasons that I don't recall).
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
At the very least, I thought the camerawork in the first Transformers movie was absolutely spectacular.
The latter movies, though, yeah, it was a bit overblown.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Thing I try to keep in mind about Bay is that even with the Transformers movies is he directs them to get the funds for his actual passion projects. Not to say that his other movies are perfect but there's a clear distinction quality wise between the Transformer sequels and Pain and Gain & this movie.
Bay's primary flaw is that his energy caters to very particular types of movies. The job of a director is largely to make the script come to life, the best directors can actually improve upon the script. With Bay if something doesn't work in the script he just barrels forward.
I felt that AOE and DOTM were actually better movies filmed, but the editing pushed them well beyond what would have been best for the story.
I found an article on the current financial situation surrounding 13 Hours in theaters.
Up front, from what I can tell, I think the site itself might be more right-wing oriented (the article looks more tilted that way, at least), so take that as you will depending on if that affects your viewpoint of what's been written.
Up front, it is impossible to ignore that the movie is by no means a blockbuster, and as a Michael Bay movie, its reception has been relatively lackluster. Odds are the movie is not going to pass the $100 million dollar mark before it heads out of theaters and toward home video release. The political angle is probably not helping it, but given the subject matter the political angle is pretty much inevitable. Plus, you have the inevitable Bay-haters, and unlike Bay's bigger movies (most notably the Transformers series), this isn't operating with nearly the same marketing force or built-in franchise fan base behind it.
However, even if the movie isn't a massive hit, it may be too early to call it a complete flop or failure, especially since the movie does only have a budget of $50 million. It has made well over half its budget over two weeks, so depending on the legs this movie has it may yet come out a success, even if it's not a major hit movie.
Depending on how it goes and if it drops off or keep chugging along, we may need to wind up looking at 13 Hours more in comparison to Pain and Gain than Bay's bigger, $100-Plus million blockbuster projects that he seems to be taking more and more as a means of letting him make projects such as this and P&G.
edited 30th Jan '16 2:00:13 AM by TheSpaceJawa
Oh, I get it. CIA=Current administration. They're not a long standing part of government we were supposed to hate since the 1980s or anything.
Hell, it's not like the incident involved a population who made sport of striking the heads and necks of the native population remnants they conquered, lets make the issue as much about party politics as much as possible. I mean, the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs manual has an entire volume dedicated to foreign nationals dying. Our "representatives" obviously don't expect foreign leaders to turn on one another when their people are killed by ours or even in the general vicinity of us. They seem to remember we're a population who collected scalps from the conquered native population, but maybe they should, since that's what they do and we've proven so similar already.
edited 30th Jan '16 7:39:12 AM by IndirectActiveTransport
BTW, Watch Mojo released a top ten list on why Bay is hated:
Case and point: Consider that the budget for 13 Hours is listed at being a 'mere' $50 Million.
Pain & Gain? Budget was listed at a relatively meager $26 Million (though the fact that it's light on anything regarding special effects or explosions probably helps in its case).
I think it's been stated that he has a talent for keeping the cost of making his movies down, which makes you wonder that for however expensive his live action Transformers movies have been, how much more expensive might they have been to make if someone else was in charge of them.