Steven Soderbergh:
I’ve removed all sound and color from the film, apart from a score designed to aid you in your quest to just study the visual staging aspect.
I am usually vehemently against “messing with” someone else’s movie but Soderbergh’s experiment really enhances (but doesn’t replace) the classic “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.
Without the real sound it’s only so so, but I was amazed at how good Raiders looks in B&W. I’m going to have to see if I can coax my TV into displaying it this way…
Soderbergh is such a film nerd. But I think he’s a bit pretentious, though, and this sort of proves that. I know he’s trying to make a point, but he’s also ripping off Spielberg and Fincher in the process. He’s the kind of artist that can only ‘remake’ someone else’s hard work, rather than create something from scratch. His use of music cues is sloppy at best.
You missed the point. This isn’t a ripoff; Soderbergh isn’t trying to somehow remake the film in his own idiom to steal cred. He’s trying to examine what makes this movie so great, in a form that allows fewer distractions than simply watching it.
It’s a study aid, and it’s pretty clever. This is how good filmmakers become great ones, by learning the grammar of film and how it affects viewers in the tiniest ways.
The difference is that he hasn’t changed anything other than the music (which is ghastly). He merely stripped out the color and dialogue to focus on lighting, scene cuts etc. it is nothing more than an academic exercise, one that many film students could benefit from