Change Your Image
MarkSchultzCAS
From 2015-2021 Mark owned Shake Audio Post at MilkBoy in Philadelphia. Prior to that he was a Senior Mixer at Post Perfect and Sound Lounge, both in New York, from 1996-2006. He was Senior Sound Designer at Nickelodeon from 1988-1996. He was a live music mixer at MTV before that.
He has six Emmy Nominations (four wins), and is the winner of multiple CINE awards for his work with Sesame Workshop.
Mark is originally from Lancaster, PA.
Reviews
Daisy Jones & the Six: Track 7: She's Gone (2023)
Best Directed Episode
I'm here to discover who directed this episode. It was clear to me watching it that it was someone with a superior aesthetic, and being a remote shoot, it only made sense it would be a different person. I am glad to learn the name of Will Graham. I am required to add more characters to this review, so I will ramble on about what I liked. The lenses appeared to be different choices, and the angles bringing us into scenes were smart. The party scene is an excellent example. The DP got it all perfect, too. Different skin tones were all beautifully rendered in the strong sunlight. It was nice to be away from the sometimes-taxing songs the band plays for a spell. I am finding the lyrics of the show's original band songs to be the consistent low-water mark of this series. I mean, "I put the man in the moon... I put the dial in the tone." Ouch, ouch, ouch!
Fleishman Is in Trouble (2022)
I don't get the love this show is hard to sit through
It's rare to watch an entire season of any show and not develop empathy for any character, but that was my experience with this. I found myself actually annoyed with Fleishman and disliking everyone in his family as well as most of the supporting characters, not caring at all about their issues, and being deeply annoyed at the voice of the writer. In what universe does a neurotic nerd react to his wife leaving by having unlimited sex with as many partners as possible? And how does anyone who looks like Eisenberg even score? Because he has money? This show is a perfect example of why you can't just take a novel and transcribe it, and call it a teleplay. I very much never want to see another thing this writer writes, because I'll be re-traumatized. The show has zero pace, it absolutely drags, and this leads to fans of the story saying things like, "wait until episode five!" And even that doesn't work. I seriously do not get the love.
Fisk (2021)
Heaps of Laughs
A gem of a show mixed by a deaf person. Now I am going to type many more characters to achieve the minimum number desired by the app to make this an acceptable submission for others to read. Hopefully no one is still reading at this point because all I am doing is typing words that don't matter. But I will repeat that this is a really fun show and is worth watching, but the audio mix is preposterous. You'll need to always have one hand on the volume to lower the music, and then raise it back up to hear the dialog. The sound effects are ear-splitting as well. Heavy sigh, twenty-four characters to go; I made it!
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Bright, uplifting, family fun!
Oh wait, that was Lorax. After reading the first dozen user reviews searching for someone who reads this film's thesis as I do, I am quitting that quest and putting fingers to keys.
The film's unique convention is to employ seven key actors portraying several lives they have lived/are living/will live across centuries, into the future. Reincarnation, not simply, "Tom Hanks plays several characters."
The arc of each life is therefore much more expansive than in traditional storytelling, and the rules in force tell us that actions in past lives carry forward and must be reconciled in some future life, for a life to be content.
The non-linear inter-cutting of multiple situations and arcs starts in the first minute and challenges the viewer to connect dots until a unifying thesis emerges - that institutionalized oppression is evil and overwhelming, yes, and must be challenged by individuals, no matter how long the odds seem to be against the individual.
There are countless stories across time that tell of a hero's quest to take action to defeat evil and restore balance. Quite unlike most of them, this film has a wildly expansive and elaborately ornate unfolding. It is, in singular moments, very funny, very shocking, wonderfully swashbuckling, downright spacey, and magical/mythical. On the flip side, the main storyline with Halle Berry's impossible to understand futuristic traveler character is full of sketchy material that raises more questions than the film answers, and none of it is important (who put that mountain on earth - the one that can be converted to a huge satellite dish with a blue laser beacon at the touch of a button, and for that matter, WTF was she doing on Earth anyway? She flew in on what looked like a pretty slick, perfectly functional spacecraft?) All this detracts and confuses, and in a three hour movie, it's just too much sht squeezed into one sack.
Others call this a masterpiece. Well, certainly the production quality is sky high in every regard, and that is where a large portion of the audience form their impressions.
My takeaway: this is a very creative, very well made, very challenging to follow and hugely indulgent vehicle for the author(s) to make their point.
One odd detail: most people die of head trauma. If there is a significance that makes this vital to the thesis, it remains obscure to me in hindsight.
Date Night (2010)
A poor writer's version of "True Lies"
Wow, so disappointing. A poor writer's version of "True Lies" or "The Man Who Knew Too Little", this thing really feels like Steve & Tina were asked to just ad lib or tap dance - make that pole dance - through a bunch of set-ups, until the crew laughed. Then they moved on.
Literally, this is what the final scene in the sex club is -- and then they show us out takes basically proving that's how they shot it.
The story completely collapses when they go to Whalberg's apartment the second time. He says,"It's late, we already used this scene in the movie," and Steve says, "you have to let us in because the story has absolutely nowhere to go if you don't."
The film has funny moments but the people rating it 7 stars are smoking something.
Nine (2009)
A weak story expertly told.
What is the difference between stage and screen? A play is a temporal art; it goes off in one glorious breath and we are sometimes content with great music and performance and spectacle -- and the story does not need to be told in as much detail as we get in a 3-act film.
On film however, we can make things perfect. Re-shoot, re-light, edit, edit, edit, re-mix the sound, re-think it, until it seems perfect.
I have nothing but superlatives for every pro who had a hand in making this film. I can't imagine changing a single decision. The acting was perfect, the sets were phenomenal, the songs are brilliant, the sound, the lighting, the costumes, the makeup, the editing is genius.
However the screenplay is the dead fish in the punch bowl, so to speak. There is not enough story here to support a three-act structure. We meet Guido at a moment of crisis and watch him fail to deal with it. His character flaws are huge; he has no way out; he withdraws. His friend comes to him and tells him to snap out of it and give it another shot. He does. Woof.
There is very little emotional charge in this for the audience, and as it creeps along toward two hours in length, you understand that this play simply should have remained a play.
Unless you think like the Director. If so, you want the endless resources to explode your spectacle across the screen. To have more lights, more angles, a crane or hey, a helicopter shot, the most beautiful women on Earth in the most insane fashions and makeup, the greatest actor (perhaps), as your leading man. The phenomenal sound track, the whole of Rome at your fingertips. A sound stage covered in white sand. Someone will clean it up! You want it all.
Funny, but that's the flaw that ruins Guido. As Guido says early in the press conference, "you sometimes get magic." And sometimes you flop.
10 out of 10 for every category you can name in film-making. 3 out of 10 for the most important category in film-making: Screenplay.
Cold Souls (2009)
Great Premise, Disappointing Execution
As credits rolled on Cold Souls yesterday, I heard the audience collectively say, "Okay ...?" Read that aloud with an up-ending, as in, "one time? at band camp?" and you'll get the proper translation.
Many times great films leave the audience with a question to ponder, and following one of those films we turn to each other and say. "Wow -- what do you think?" And we find ourselves talking over the possibilities for hours. This film merely made us all shrug, as if to say, "after all that, this is where you're leaving us?"
This film starts by asking the questions, "What would happen if you could physically remove the soul from the body?" and "What if they put someone else's soul in your body?!" Those are great freaking' questions, and as the writer(s) poured wine and stroked their chins, every intellectual corollary must have been vigorously volleyed back and forth.
Trouble is, none of the potential conflict that might arise in a great story pursuing those questions ever appears on screen in Cold Souls. Paul G. essentially solves one problem in this film -- someone nicks his soul and he goes and gets it back.
Other than that, he doesn't arc, he ends up at the end of the story pretty much exactly where he started, okay he has some empathy for Nina he gained along the way. But what happened when he got someone else's soul?? His body rejected it! OMG! So we see him -- take 2 pills three times a day. We don't see him feel anything and he sure doesn't act any different. Did I mention that it was a new SOUL and not a new PHONE? Come to think of it most people are more animated when they try to adjust to a new phone.
He has to go face to face with the oh-so-deadly Dmitri in order to regain his soul? Holy crap! What will Dmitri do to him? Not much. Dmitri asks him to leave, so he does, then he just goes and gets his soul, no repercussions. Dmitri doesn't even retaliate against Nina. He is simply not heard from again.
Paul resists, resists, resists, and then is FORCED to look inside at his own soul! What will we see when he puts those goggles on??? What would Charlie Kaufman show us in this situation? I don't know either but I imagine it would be amazing to watch. Here, we see a white seamless background and a couple of androgynous looking guys. All very hush hush.
So this is it in a nutshell -- this film had no dynamics. It was a flat line. Sure it contains an interesting premise, one that makes for great discussion. But every opportunity to dramatize the conflict that was expected to be at the heart of each situation, was missed by the writer and the director.
Easy on those stars. This is not a film you will be discussing a month from now.
All Along (2007)
Not ready for prime time
All Along plays very much like a bad first-year student film. It is very poorly directed and the pace of the cut could not be worse, like they tried to stretch scenes to make them longer. As you watch it you continually think, "this should move faster, this should be omitted entirely." Casting himself as the lead was a questionable call for the writer, to say the least. The young actors in flash back look and sound absolutely nothing like the older actors they are supposed to be, so you'll be thrown off by that. Extremely bad sound throughout. The writing is sophomoric, scenes Xeroxed from bad porn, jokes that seventh graders laugh at. Ranks way down among the worst films ever made.
Broken Flowers (2005)
The year's most overrated film.
Years after squirming through "Stranger than Paradise," I was reluctant to give this director another two hours of my life, but based on my respect for Bill Murray, and hey, the reviews, the big award at Cannes and the whole thing ...
My perspective going in? I'm not an "action film" fan in the least, and I have a strong interest in thought-provoking stories even when they are too slow for others to sit through (In The Bedroom comes to mind).
Having said that, this film impressed me as a crowning example of a director who needs to get out of the cutting room and let a smart editor show him how to pace a story. This is the worst-paced breath of stale air I have experienced in years. It's not badly edited in a technical sense, it's wonderfully acted, but give me some paint drying already.
Treating us to moody "un-lit" scenes, using music that is inorganic to the material, then repeating the same song again and again, and failing to pull up time in the most basic way (the ten or twenty scenes of Don Johnston driving in his car are extended to make sure we get plenty of -- wait for it -- scenery!, and then -- here it comes -- some more scenery! -- then a quick shot of the map, and two or three or sometimes four more shots of some -- scenery!!!), Jarmusch trudges from event to event with a Ten Ton weight-on-the-brain-of-the-audience style that is, thankfully, his alone to brag about.
The story has a compelling premise, although the plot devise (his pal wants to be a detective?) that sets him in motion is a bit (cough) contrived. Still, it's Bill Murray, with that face, those eyes, those sagging shoulders. We want to care about Johnston's quest, although when he arrives at the doors of the other characters, everyone seems to have forgotten something ... language. Yet, we invest ourselves in finding the answer he is looking for. But after we've done that, his final encounter ends with an event that only serves to befuddle him and us, and we are left wishing someone else was telling this story.
And I'll try not to spoil the thrilling end for you -- but read the credits and see what a Director with nothing to say does to cast the film's final reveal.
For two or three days I waited for some "thesis" or purpose to arrest me and allow me to appreciate Jarmusch in some profound way. Alas, when a minor character steals the film just by being naked for five seconds, well, you get the idea. I've spoken to writers about this turd, and there's simply nothing any of us have found to warrant the praise you may read. Save your money.