I read the other day that Americans prefer event driven movies as
compared to character studies. Europeans prefer character studies which
may be why I often prefer European films over American films. I also
after reading some reviews and looking at the ratings decided to go see
"Contagion." Steven Soderbergh does character studies so in spite of
the fact this is an apocalyptic scifi thriller it isn't an amusement
park ride. The matinée I attended had all of 5 other people and yes I
got the choice seat in the house, in this case right below the digital
projector's booth because in this particular auditorium the screen fills
the wall and any closes might give you whiplash.
The film is about an outbreak of a deadly disease after an American
woman, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, returns from a business trip sick.
It follows the breakdown of society as disease spreads and the CDC races
to find a vaccine. Jude Law plays a conspiracy theorist blogger based
in San Francisco. Some online "conspiracy" sites think the film
promotes vaccine use but many seeing the film would want to order up
some of the survival supplies that sponsor their shows. Laurence
Fishburne plays a CDC doctor. And I almost didn't recognize Bryan
Cranston ("Breaking Bad") in his role. The societal breakdown was so
well done I wonder if they read the same diary I read online by a person
who went through the breakdown in Argentina.
Soderbergh is a big fan of digital film making and uses Red cameras. On
the extras to "Che" he states that he didn't think he needed to shoot in
4K and 2K was just fine (2K is about the same as 1080p HD and 4K has 4x
the resolution). Well he shot this in 4K and 5K with Red cameras and it
looks great.
This is very much a thinking person's movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1598778/
And his next film "Haywire" due in January was previewed and looks good:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1506999/
