Robert1951

Lady in the Lake. Where do I begin? The lighting is so bad that the title could just as well have been Lady in the Dark. Apparently it has become fashionable in recent years to film in darkness. It is not natural darkness, because three lamps in a room provide almost no light in Lady in the Lake. That's physically impossible. Faces and facial expressions are almost invisible. Try this at home: with three lamps it is impossible not to see the faces. But in Lady in the Lake this is apparently physically possible. Everything is shrouded in darkness. But my biggest disappointment was Natalie Portman, whom I admired immensely in Léon! In Lady in the Lake there was nothing left of her acting talent. Moreover, she joined in the fashion of hoarse speech that started with Gillian Anderson in The Fall. None of Portman's spoken sentences were clearly audible and her last three words were a completely unintelligible whisper. Actors no longer articulate. Their lips no longer move. Every word is mumbled under their breath. Take an actor like Wood Harris (Shell Gordon in Lady in the Lake), who played Avon Barksdale in The Wire and who then was perfectly understandable, while now he spoke with his mouth almost closed. But then again, The Wire had good directors. But Alma Har'el's direction is terribly bad. After four episodes I stopped. I thought I had to go to an eye doctor and an ear doctor, but it was just the incredibly bad lighting and the very bad sound of this series. Black Doves, for example, was perfectly lit and every actor was perfectly audible and understandable. What a waste of talent, a good story and my precious time.

A story can be good and the acting too, but if the viewer cannot hear what an actor is saying, it ruins the show. If there were no subtitles, I wouldn't have understood a word of the dialogue of American Primeval. Take, for instance, Shea Whigham (plays Jim Bridger). His lips don't move, his articulation is horrible, his jaws are clenched, he doesn't use his vocal cords. By the way, that's the fashion the last decade: actors speaking hoarse, not using their vocal cords; it all started with Gillian Anderson in The Fall and now almost every British and American actor is doing that. They also speak with almost no volume. But every other sound is dominating, like back ground music (way louder than dialogue), the horses walking in the mud. Take, for instance, the sounds of the arrows during the Massacre in Episode 1. In reality an arrow doesn't make al lot of noise flying by. But these arrows sound like missiles. So why can I hear every arrow, but I cannot hear what Shea Whigham is mumbling? By the way, why is Shea Whigham mumbling? Is it because everybody was mumbling in the era of American Primeval? Or does Shea Whigham think that mumbling makes him a better actor and more interesting? Or are microphones nowadays that bad. Don't directors care that viewers cannot hear what is mumbled. In a movie like China Town (1974) I can hear every syllable, but in American Primeval no mumbled syllable can be understood. Thank you, Gillian Anderson, for ruining movie dialogue.

What a total waste of the talented Han Hyo-joo. Lame story, lame and overly-exaggerated acting. Lame characters. There also is a complete lack of chemistry between de male and the female lead. On top of that he is very rude to her. What fire fighter will ever be rude to a woman, let alone a gorgeous woman. I can't beleive why good actors and good actresses participate in these lame and stupid movies. Why do the script writers get paid for this cr*p? If you want to see how script writing is done, check out "Cold Eyes" (2013, written by Kin-Yee Au, Jo Ui-seok and Nai-Hoi Yau) or "Always" (2011, written by Song Il-gon, Roh Hong-Jin and Ji-Sun An), both with Han Hyo-joo. And by the way, shame on director Gi-hoon Jeong.