Its otherworldly beauty is just one of those things an artist happens upon by chance or afflatus. Luxury condo made famous by Scarface and Miami Vice now home to exiled former Panamanian president/billionare.From Collateral to Blackhat, Michael Mann has redefined digital cinema.M iami Vice the movie does have characters and dialogue and a story about undercover drug investigations along the crime-ridden Florida coast, and I don’t think Michael Mann, whatever his painterly gifts, ever consciously aspired to the avant-garde. So he went out and made a watercolour movie that looked exactly like watercolours should.Īnyway, Miami Vice the movie isn’t really Miami Vice the video installation, however tempting it is to talk about in terms of pure form - the day-glo digital daydream, just rapture with a two-hour running time. It’s like trying to recreate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in watercolours. Universal Television/Everett Collectionīut Michael Mann looked at digital cameras and must have thought, Look, these things don’t work like regular film cameras, and it’s silly to pretend that they do. celluloid, which indeed most were - and those that weren’t, like the second Star Wars prequel, were designed to look like they were, because the studios figured that audiences would mind the transition to this cheap new technology less if they didn’t know that anything had even changed. Back in 2006, you’ll remember, there still prevailed in Hollywood the quaint notion that a film ought to be shot and projected on film, i.e. To understand this you have to look at how Miami Vice was made. It might have began life in the multiplex. We’ll see how I feel a couple more episodes in.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Every time I’ve tried to watch some old late 70s or early 80s favorite the pre-cinematic / pre-Miami Vice TV cheese factor just punchs me in the face. In some ways Miami Vice might represent one of the first TV dramas that IS still watchable. Before that, each of these information exchanges required an actual character. ![]() Someone needs to warn someone? phone call comes in. Need to know something? Look it up on the computer. The computer and the cel phone have also become crutches for easy writing solutions. Everything happens piled up on top of itself, and oftentimes there’s no setup or character development. Nowadays, particularly on network TV, the editing is all rushed. And the close up shots of the seedy Colombian drug lord’s sleeve, gaudy bracelet, and rings were priceless. Maybe it’s just because my High School years were in the early/mid 80s, but there’s certainly a deep nostalgia factor. One tends to forget that styling black guys dressed like Michael Jackson (2 belts!), Don Johnson sported a cheesy mustache, or that sleeveless vests were ever in. Since it’s a 1984 show, this is real 80s, or at least how Hollywood wanted us to see it then. This now forgotten world of no cel phones, no computers, teased hair, and leisure suits. When “ In the Air Tonight” kicked in, I got goosebumps.įor me the real star of the show is 1984 Miami. The music is still fantastic, and the evocative much-touted MTV style shots of car hoods and wheels racing along night streets still work. The writing is great, and starting off the protagonists separately, with Tubbs a bit of a mystery, works well. But the 2 hour pilot plays more like a movie, a Michael Mann movie, in fact. Some of the acting, particularly reaction shots, still retains that 70s/80s cheese factor. Sure the picture quality of the DVD transfer is mediocre, and it would’ve benefited from wide screen shooting, but it’s still better than most TV today. ![]() I’d watched the show 26 years ago, but this is really just a review of the pilot which just I re-watched.įor early 80’s television, the show holds up amazingly well. Dexter (one of my 2-3 favorite currently running shows) had me thinking about Miami so I found a copy of the Miami Vice complete series boxset on Amazon Marketplace for dirt cheap.
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