This week I ran my review of January’s My Bloody Valentine 3D. I loved the movie up and down, but I did have a couple of complaints, one of which was the look of the film. Check out my review here to read what I had to say.

This morning I got an email from Brian Pearson, MBV3D‘s cinematographer. The guy I called out for making the movie look bad and cheap. Brian’s not happy with me. Here’s what he had to say:

“Drop Devin an email at devin@chud.com. Let him know how much you love him; he needs the positive reinforcement.”

Devin,


MBV looks like a Public Access Show?  The timed DCP of MBV 3D looks rich, dark, moody and nothing short of awesome.  I love how you chose to single out “Karate Dog” over “I Am Legend”, “Underworld: Evolution”, “The Eye”, “White Noise 2” or “I, Robot” as reference to my previous work.    Not really fair to your readers, but an easy way to try to make your case.


Perhaps you just downloaded a stolen copy off the internet and that’s why it looked like crap to you.  But wait, there are none of those floating around.  It must just be that you have no taste.


Brian

Hey Brian, thanks for writing. Sorry I pissed you off, but I stand by what I wrote. You may want to fire off emails to all the 200+ people who saw the film at Butt Numb A Thon this weekend, since I heard the same complaint again and again. Actually, the best critique was that someone said it looked like a Canadian TV show. Like a really bloody 3D episode of Degrassi Junior High.

Maybe I don’t have taste; lord knows you wouldn’t be the first to say so. I have a bunch of Cowboy Bebop fans sending me hate mail today as well. But I can only give people my opinion, and that’s my opinion. Your film will be in theaters soon enough, and people will be able to make up their own minds. At the very least my glowing review will get a couple more folks to see the movie than might have otherwise.

As for your credits… well, first of all, listing Karate Dog is pretty funny. Maybe that film is shot in glorious Scope and features pools of rich, velvety blacks and colors that pop out of the frame, but I wouldn’t know, since I never saw Karate Dog. I also never saw White Noise 2, and I’m willing to be 95% of the people reading this haven’t seen it either. As for I Am Legend and I, Robot… well, to be fair, Andrew Lesnie and Simon Duggan were the DPs on those films. I must admit that I am not enough of an expert to delineate between a DP and the DP on the action unit, which was your job. Maybe the action unit DP has a lot of freedom or maybe he’s working in the very precise boundaries created by the cinematographer. Either way, I felt it would be fairer to mention other films where you were the actual DP.

And like I said, Karate Dog. I’m giggling from typing that out right now.

Anyway Brian, sorry you got upset. I guess it goes to show that even though you probably make more money than I do and are achieving levels of success in your career (and getting cool opportunities like shooting a 3D film, a challenge I’m sure many a cinematographer would be interested in tackling), the words of a guy on the internet can still piss you off. You should be psyched that your movie is going to be in theaters next month and people are going to be really loving it. Only nerds like me are going to complain about the fact that it looks like a made for USA Network movie. Everybody else will be too busy laughing and screaming.