JayRicciardi

I think it is interesting to consider the shift from the B&W Clerks to the full color Clerks 2. There is a massive shift in tone from color alone, although the two films were made with a big time gap between.

The first time I saw John Woo’s Face/Off, our DVD player was a little busted and only played the movie in black and white. After later seeing it in color, I really feel like I saw two entirely different films – the tone, the feel, and aesthetic were drastically changed. I’m not sure which I preferred, but the B&W version definitely felt more genuine and older. Odd connotations for such an absurd film.

I agree with this wholeheartedly; age and maturity rarely seem to match up. Unfortunately, ERSB and PEGI ratings are restricted to very small blocks of text on boxes and occupy a small amount of visual real estate compared to box art. They only have the ability to make a broad judgement with a few key reasons, and hope that the consumer will be responsible enough to research the product and the ratings for themselves. This is an unfortunate double edged sword: I’d love a more detailed rating, explaining maturity content – but I also would hate for the rating to overwhelm the remaining real estate of the product.

My only real criticism of Arrow is Oliver’s acting direction. Stephen Amell always seems like he has a much greater acting range that is always forced downward and tamed into the Arrow persona. Whenever I watch Arrow, I can’t help but feel that there could be so much more character depth if her was allowed to cut loose a little.