the Dalaverse

Since my only final was changed to a take-home (not that I don't still have two and a half papers to write), I celebrated by watching the first two extras on the DMC second disc. And kept up a sort of running commentary of my thoughts and squee. Won't make much sense unless you've seen the the features, I should add.



"The only way a location is going to get picked by Gore is if you have to swim to it, hike to it, rapel into it, or parachute into it." Cue shots of Gore running around a beach like a crazy person.

I really like the bit with the Caribe actors.

And then they say they were gonna need a tank, and I went BZUH? because I was thinking military tank. Picture the scene of Jack running down the beach with the Pelegostos after him, except they're driving TANKS. AWESOME.

Yay, the Black Pearl! The construction of the wheel is really interesting too, because that shit looked real.

TIA DALMA! WHEEEE! Gore is a total fangirl, and I'm so happy they found Naomi Harris.

Ooooh, dice game. And a guitar? WTF, Gore? I thought they did a good job with the dice game; although I didn't get it completely on the first go-round (to be fair, I don't know how to play poker or any card game beyond the skill level of Go Fish, War and BS), I got it enough to be able to follow it dramatically.

Hee. I kind of love the pirate extras. They seem really happy to be involved.

KEVIN MCNALLY! At last it all begins to come together! Oh yeah, there's Johnny...

"If you're diligent, intelligent, and realize there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat, you'll get it done." I think I kind of fell in love with JB there for a second.

Man, they went through some crap on pre-production. Quite good, if a little sad because of all the frustration.




JB: "Anytime you have characters that are so interesting you want to make more stories about them -- you want to make it work..." Yes, Jerry, it's called fanfiction. I kid, I kid (mostly)

Momentary flashes from AWE, easily detected from the costumes...

Ack, needles! Was that really necessary? No one wants to die of tyhoid, I guess. Oh, I can't watch this ::retches::

Heh, DMC is a road movie. Excellent.

Aww, Johnny and his stupid hat. Hee -- "you become some kind of weird gypsy family, you know, like a circus, you know -- a traveling circus."

I just realized I've never heard Kevin McNally speak without his Gibbs accent before. He has a very nice, soothing, educated British voice.

So they had four tallships playing the whole contents of Port Royal habor. Nice.

Dude, they're talking about Barbossa's motivations ::squees:: This is technically spoilery, but it's vague enough that it doesn't bother me (and I am the anti-spoiler, if you want a litmus test).

The Dominica stuff is really, really cool.

JACK! Being sarcastic and scruffy and sweaty! EEEEE!

Dude, I will TOTALLY give my up gym membership to work on a Pirates film. Who do I need to see about making that happen?

Hee, Orlando dangling from his bamboo shoot.

Where are my little hamsters? In their wheel! Yes they are!

Some really funny slo-mo shots of Jack making faces while he's in the wheel. And he's right; I was totally on-board with the wheel, no pun intended, and didn't think for a second about all this stuff they had to do to get there.

I really, really like Gore's "CG is not a verb." GEORGE LUCAS.

I am strangely attracted to Gore in a wetsuit.

Bwaha! Martin Klebba just made a pissing-in-the-pool joke!

::boggles:: David Baile is talking. COTTON SPEAKS! He is so my movie grandpa.

I wanna jump in that blue water so bad.

Ooooh, shark!

That boat's from AWE.

Uh-oh, here comes the storm.

Dolphins, and then the eloquent and charming Jack Davenport. Lovely.

There's some AWE costuming. And lots of hugging.

Conclusion: I enjoyed this mini-documentary much better than the first. All the behind-the-shoot stuff I really wanted to see, all the Caribbean mishaps -- it really put the film into perspective, in light of all the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into it. Davy Jones' crew and the kraken notwithstanding, these movies aren't built solely on special effects. They built the ships, and worked in beautiful and difficult environments, and worked out old-fashioned stunts. And at the end of the day, they were happy with the work they did.