3x3: best oceans

Movies
1

We start discussing the best oceans in movies at the 1:27* mark of the Qt3 Movie Podcast of Robocop.

Tom Chick
3. Casey Affleck
2. Bram Stoker’s Dracula

  1. Escape Plan

Dingus
3. Jaws
2. There Will Be Blood

  1. I Love You Man

Kelly Wand
3. Jaws
2. The Bounty

  1. The Perfect Storm

Your turn. What are your favorite oceans in the movies? Please listen to the show to hear the specifics on ours, and email your ideas for next week’s topic to [email protected].

*Yes. You read that right. Sorry about the length. We got carried away talking about Robocop. The 2014 Robocop! Of all things.

2
  1. Lifeboat
  2. Das Boot
  3. Captains Courageous
3
  1. Life of Pi: because non-aquatic mammals can live on the ocean, but it’s playing on hard mode. The ocean is vast and implacable, and so full of wonders that its secrets cannot remain submerged.

the ocean is so big it must be hidden behind spoiler tags

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  1. Finding Nemo: I love the depth–ha!–of environments in this movie. There’s sea level, where sunlight dances across the waves. There’s the sparkle and bustle of life in coral reefs. There’s polluted sites littorally right near the cities. There’s quiet sandy places filled with floating danger. There’s turbulent currents filled with ancient turtles. There is the dark abyss, where light is bait, followed by enormous teeth.

  2. The Shawshank Redemption Spoilers! It’s very late in the movie, but seeing the shocking blue of the Pacific after all the stone grey of the prison brings me very close to tears. The movie ends on a flat beach against the wide expanse of the ocean, where nothing stands that resembles a wall. It’s breathtaking, and such a release of decades of tension. It’s like a combination of tracks 7 and 11 on Pearl Jam’s first album.

Wife-picks:

I asked my wife what the best oceans were, and she replied “11 and 13”. She’s great! And she made more immediate sense than “Casey Affleck!”

And then she listed:

Danny Ocean

Yellow Submarine (especially the Sea of Holes)

and

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

4

Cast Away: the terrible and fearsome power of the ocean in the inky black of night rendering human life to the inconsequential. Also terrifyingly done in The Perfect Storm.
The Lego Movie: The heavy, rolling swells remind me of Corny Cole’s thick and viscous ocean in some animated movie (Raggedy Ann and Andy?)…and let’s see if I can find it on YouTube… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miar5eKG4uY the short he animated primarily with Bic ball point pens as I recall it (the youtube bit doesn’t capture the incredible detail he would pack into some frames).
Dark City: Shell Beach. Dazzling when you finally see it after the oppressive and unrelenting dark of the city.

5

Wow, no mentions for Water World?

— Alan

6

I can’t recall anything special about the ocean. No qualities of light, form, motion, whatever. Perhaps I’m simply not remembering it (I only watched it once, and that was more than enough).

7

The Abyss was the first which came to my mind.

8

This reminded me that I forgot about the wonderful Cousteau documentaries, like World Without Sun, which certainly showed the ocean as well as any fictional film.

9

I remember that the ocean in Waterworld was expensive.

10

“He’s got hydrogen psychosis, the crazy-eye! Steve! They say you’ve got crazy-eye! Get him out of the fucking water!”