Quote:
Originally Posted by Suijin
No one has mentioned Morning Light, which is a documentary about a group of young sailors training for and competing in the Transpac. Pretty well done.
|
Thanks, Suijin, for the heads up. I'd not heard of Morning Light before.
None of the movie review sites treats it kindly. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates the critics to give it a 33% approval rating and the audience to give it a 52% approval rating (see
Morning Light - Rotten Tomatoes). IMDB users, 277 of them, rate it at 5.8/10 and IMDB calculates a meta-score of 51/100 (see
Morning Light (2008) - IMDb)
Harken's Australian website has some interesting tech info, including identifying the
camera boat that sailed beside Morning Light during the Transpac (Cheyenne, renamed from Steve Fossett's Playstation) and that Morning Light was Disney's
boat, formerly Steve Kahn's Pegasus (see
Harken).
I found the 'tv reality show style' first act a bore.
The
race footage was full of contradictions (e.g. are the crew cruising or
racing? sometimes one (lots of sail trim, but even then only slight attention to the competition and tactics and never a mention of polars or target speeds for the
wind conditions) most times the other (minimal attention to sail trim, no attention to the competition) and without a coherent narrative. Superb
camera work. Mediocre
music.
I ended up agreeing with all of the comments on Rotten Tomatoes: a vanity
project by Disney that ends up uninspiring with boring aristo-brats, shallow exploration of
race tactics and sailing technology, deliberate avoidance of detailing the only squall, and too many sunset shots.
My score: Initial temporary score of 3/10. When I add in the retail cost of the movie, electricity to run the BluRay player and tv, and the loss of 105 minutes from my life, I calculate a final sum total of 0/10 shading ever so slightly into the negative.
Al