While having achieved the specific look intended, the movie in general is disappointingly poor, IMHO.

Wouldn't say, poor, Piotr, but wished it had reached for something bigger, but then again, I could watch Johnny Depp peel potatoes for 3 hours.

how do we know when we are seeing an EX? They used more than one camera for the tight stuff.

Thanks for posting the link, just watched it too.

Did someone forget to pack the tripod when shooting this sequence. (my wife's remarks without any provocation)

Dillinger dies? Aw now you ruined the ending for me! :-)

As if I heard my daughter, Mike!

Being Johnny Depp's fan like most (young) women are, she was disappointed with the film just like myself, though.

We had an older friend over the other night for dinner and she mentioned seeing Public Enemies. I asked her what she thought of the movie and the her reply was that the textures in the movie were so real. She said it looked like you could reach out and touch the bricks. Which I thought was interesting on two counts - first she isn't a person interested in photography etc. and second she didn't talk about the story...

I haven't seen it - maybe I should.

Find out if she was talking about the cinema or the film :-)

I'm sorry, Dean, I hate it when that happens! But I did keep waiting to see where and when it happened, kept thinking it was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Kevin--Exactly, that's just what my wife felt. Have to give Mann credit for wanting a look to connect with the audience and getting it. Next, as Piotr says, he'll get a script that connects, too.

Piotr--I know where she's coming from. Pirates is the only movie I'm considering owning (except for Shoot Em Up).

Pirates are fine, but where my daughter (quite a film connoisseur, BTW) fell in love with Johnny was Chocolat (not to confuse with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) - she was 12 years old then :)

i thought they used video to great effect, and with thematic justification. there were clearly decisions made to let the video look even more rough for certain sequences, i swear some were shot interlaced, and they let certain highlights get much hotter than they had to. it seemed to me that for a few sequences they deliberately limited dynamic range and latitude. the only thing that i couldn't justify was the uneven color. the initial jail-break scene, for instance. skin was leaning way into magenta, but then was clean in the next scene.

ever since i entered film school and realized i wasn't going to spend thousands of dollars on my class projects, i have been devoted to video. film is beautiful. so what? i don't understand why everyone stands on their heads to mimic film. (24p?? why? what's wrong with 30?) i loved the contrast in PE. i also love the way light can look on skin with video. the scene where depp and the female lead are lying in bed, with a blue edge on faces, on depp's arm, i thought was fantastic.

and i thought the "messy" ambient audio for certain scenes complimented their manipulation of video as well.