Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Meet Newcomer Joe Alwyn, the 25-Year-Old Star of Ang Lee’s ‘Billy Lynn’
Meet Newcomer Joe Alwyn, the 25-Year-Old Star of Ang Lee’s ‘Billy Lynn’
Meet Newcomer Joe Alwyn, the 25-Year-Old Star of Ang Lee’s ‘Billy Lynn’
Imagine landing your first role in an Oscar-winning director’s film. Now imagine that film is being shot with a technology that’s never before been attempted. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the latest visual experiment from Ang Lee, stars newcomer Joe Alywn, a 25-year-old who left his London drama school early to make a boundary-pushing film.
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Review: A Visually Stunning, But Failed Experiment
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Review: A Visually Stunning, But Failed Experiment
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Review: A Visually Stunning, But Failed Experiment
Ang Lee is am ambitious filmmaker, but ambition doesn’t always pay off. With Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon he fused emotional relationships with the dazzle of wuxia action, and in Life of Pi he told a story about spirituality and survival through an innovative use of CG and motion-capture performance. In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Lee is once again pushing the boundaries of filmmaking shooting the film in 120 frames per second (five times the normal rate of your average movie). What results is a stunning and unique viewing experience, but ultimately a failed experiment.
The War Comes Home in Latest ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer
The War Comes Home in Latest ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer
The War Comes Home in Latest ‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer
We know more about Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk today than we did when the first trailer debuted back in May. Our own Erin Whitney was present for the film’s world premiere at the New York Film Festival earlier this month, and relayed their full scoop back to us through their review: Ang Lee gets a lot of points for sheer chutzpah, having shot the first feature-length film using highly sophisticated 4K 120 frames-per-second technology, but his gambit ultimately fails. The realistic look of the film is almost too real, its crisp movements too unnaturally fluid for their own good.
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Featurette
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Featurette
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Featurette
Ang Lee is one of the most stylistically ambitious filmmakers of this decade, stunning viewers with his all-CGI (except for the star) 3D adaptation of Life of Pi in 2012. His latest, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, is even more ambitious, having been shot in 4K, 3D, and on 120 frames-per-second cameras (that’s 96 frames more than film standard, which is 24). If your brain doesn’t hurt yet, the crew has released a short featurette that discusses the challenges of shooting in such a way, and how the film will look when it hits theaters.
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer Takes You to War
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer Takes You to War
‘Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk’ Trailer Takes You to War
Following his incredible CGI work in Life of Pi, Ang Lee took a similarly ambitious approach with his latest project, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. We’ve been intrigued for months by reports that Lee shot the action sequences in 120fps to give them a more realistic and immersive feel, and while you can’t really grasp that in the first trailer, it’s still plenty compelling.