Today’s 3D news
May 18
If someone ever remarks to you that “3D won’t take over; there are hardly any 3D movies out there,” send them this way. Every day some 3D news breaks, so I’ve compiled some of today’s more interesting stuff for your viewing pleasure:
Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides will be shot in 3D. Expect a 3D representation of Johnny Depp to drive sales in the teenaged female demographic.
Japanese studio Toei is converting Battle Royale into 3D for a re-release come November 2010. While I loved the film’s premise, I’m too ignorant of Asian cinema in general and Japanese culture in particular to have enjoyed it in any meaningful way.
Horror maestro George Romero is remaking Dario Argento’s horror flick Deep Red in … 3D. This news days after Argento revealed plans to make a 3D Dracula movie. Is horror one of the genres best suited to 3D (or perhaps, least un-suited to 3D)?
Disney has bought a live-action Cinderella pitch: expect frilly blue dresses and ugly stepsisters in 3D. I’d much rather Enchanted 2 in 2D, but whatever.
And amongst several release dates recently announced by Warner Bros., Disney and 20th Century Fox, were a few 3D titles: Contagion, an action-thriller by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven, Out Of Sight); Final Destination 5 (I thought The Final Destination was the final destination?); and Journey To The Centre Of The Earth 2, the very concept of which probably has Jules Verne spinning in his grave.
So there you go, half a dozen more 3D flicks that’ll be released in the next 6 – 18 months. Not a single one of them is in any way like Avatar, though, which makes me hope that each and every one of the films I’ve outlined here will flop and kill 3D before it has a chance to take over the world. Hope springs eternal, eh? Battle Royale trailer embedded below, for the curious.
The last poster for THE LAST AIRBENDER relies on floating heads
May 08
M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming film The Last Airbender (the cartoon it’s based on was called Avatar: The Last Airbender. Bad timing, right?) is set for release Down Under on 8th of July 2010 (2nd of July in the States) . It has fans of the cartoon series dizzy with excitement while I, as a regular moviegoer who does not buy comic books or watch cartoons anymore, am left wondering why I’m supposed to give a damn… not even the trailer was convincing enough. Sure, it was probably exciting for fans of the show, but I’m afraid it might not find an audience beyond them unless word of mouth is spectacular.
The last poster for The Last Airbender leaves the trend of its previous posters behind and returns to the safety of floating heads. Ask any studio exec and they’ll tell you– when in doubt, trust the floating heads.
The title could be mistaken for The Last Airbender in 3D, because the gimmick is whacked right under the title like it matters, but don’t let this poster fool you– it doesn’t. I find it interesting that the poster includes the text ‘also playing in 2D’. You know, just in case…
PLANET OF THE APES prequel: good news and bad news
May 07
So the Planet Of The Apes prequel / reboot I mentioned earlier is gearing up to shoot in July (2010), and has recently undergone a change of name: Caesar is out, Rise Of The Apes is in (even if that sounds like a documentary chronicling human evolution, not an action sci-fi, but whatever).
The good news is that it will be released sooner rather than later: 24th of June, 2011. That’s next year! Great.
The bad news is that the apes will be CGI. WETA Digital are accomplished professionals, with credits like The Lord Of The Rings and Avatar under their belts, but nothing beats the practicality of a good old-fashioned monkey-suit. Given WETA’s involvement with Gollum and the na’vi, should we bank on the non-human apes being mo-capped? Probably. As dreadful as Tim Burton’s remake was, though, you have to admit that the monkey suits were good. Damn good.
An updated synopsis has been unveiled, too: “man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.” I’m going to guess they mean intelligence in non-human apes, but I suppose you don’t need to clarify that for the average summer action audience.
Anyway, what I want to know is this: which idiot lets the super-smart chimp out of the lab to kickstart an army and subsequent “war for supremacy”? Wouldn’t you just keep him, you know, locked in the lab? Oh, right, summer action movie, I forgot.
This time I agree with Ebert: 3D sucks
Apr 30
I wrote a few months ago about why I thought 3D movies were crap; but that was before Avatar came out, so I was writing with some degree of optimism. Now that Avatar has come and gone I can safely say that I’m still not on board for 3D. A higher degree of immersion doesn’t negate a boring script or lazy world-building.
If you don’t know who Roger Ebert is, then … you’re missing out on a lot. You could call him a film critic, but you could also call him an unmitigated genius, a pioneer in the technique of criticism. His reviews are often insightful and sincere and leave you feeling like a blind child stumbling through the woods of cinema in comparison.
Ebert recently weighed in on video games, and stirred an absolute storm of controversy in gaming circles by declaring that games aren’t, and never will be, art. In that case I disagreed with him, partly because, for all his powers, I know prescience isn’t one of them, and further, he doesn’t ever seem to have played a game younger than Pac-Man or Space Invaders, so what the hell does he know? My opinion of Ebert suffered a little.
Now, however, my faith is restored. With his usual gentle but powerful rhetoric, he’s gone to great lengths to elaborate on the futility and silliness of the current 3D craze in Hollywood. Specifically, he pinpoints a few key niggles I have with the format: Hollywood seems to be using the 3D projectors mostly for kids’ films (Pixar, Dreamworks, Avatar) or ‘event’ films (Alice In Wonderland, Clash Of The Titans, Avatar), with no consideration for, you know, ‘good’ films (he cites Hurt Locker, Precious, Casablanca, you know, the usual artsy fartsy stuff).
Another niggle he pinpoints is in the business side of 3D. Here in Australia 3D movies only cost a dollar or two more than their 2D counterparts (depending on whether or not you already own the glasses), but Ebert points out that in the US, cinemas are charging $5 – $7.50 extra, which seems borderline criminal (especially if the movie’s Clash Of The Titans). How much of Avatar‘s gross was based solely on the cost of 3D tickets? Not enough to knock it down a peg in the coveted ‘Richest Movie Ever’ runnings, but enough to gouge a few percentage points out and dent the mountain of dosh Jim regularly bathes in.
The final niggle Ebert raises that I find particularly accurate is the overbearing eyestrain caused by 3D. It’s bad enough that we’re all in a dark room with our eyes locked onto a single bright screen for two hours; now you want to shove a centimetre of dark plastic between my face and said screen? Ridiculous. Pile on the fact that the brain has to work overtime to tweak muscles into working to get the 3D right, and 3D seems physiologically implausible as a long-term format overhaul.
Ebert goes on to suggest another alternative: 48 frames-per-second film and projectors. Apparently this quadruples the film image and provides a rock-solid, smooth-as-silk, eye-popping picture. I can’t vouch for this as I’ve never experienced it, but I’m rather attached to 24fps traditional film because it’s, like, filmy, you know? Plus 48fps film would double the reel length of a film and provide untold nightmares for the poor old projectionists running the films.
We’re currently knee-deep in a 3D renaissance; many of the big studios have moved behind the new-old format, and even some ‘good’ directors are trying their hands with the fancy new double-cameras. We still need time to evaluate the impact and merit of 3D cinema, but for now, things look doubtful. Check back with me again in 5 years’ time.
Oh, so you liked AVATAR, did you?
Apr 27
So I hear that movie with the blue freaks sold a metric shitload of DVDs and Blu-Rays (where a metric shitload is measured as 3.2 million copies in the first day, and double that over the following three days). Congratulations, Jim, I believe you now hold the majority of shares in the planet Mars.
I like to think of myself as being on or shortly behind the tech curve; I have a small stack of Blu-Rays sitting awkwardly in the corner of my DVD shelf (they’re smaller than DVDs so they don’t sit nicely, and the silly blue cases make them look, well, silly). I’ve had a Blu-Ray player of some kind or other for nearly a year, and I’ve got a 1080p telly that comes with enough useless options to sink a ship, so it’s heartening to see a movie — any movie, even a lame one like this — ship a significant quantity of the silly blue boxes, because if more people are buying the things distributors might finally consider implementing some kind of price reduction. Hooray! I’ll finally have something to be grateful to Avatar for.
Then again, you all seemed to buy the movie in the first few days of its release, meaning you paid through the nose for it. That’ll raise some executives’ eyebrows — “They paid $40 for this disc? Charge them $45 next time, see what happens.” If Blu-Ray prices go up over the next few months, I’m placing the blame squarely on you, whoever you are, for buying Avatar on release day.
Hey can anyone tell me what the special features are like? I wouldn’t mind seeing how they — oh wait, there are no special features, never mind
OPINIONS COUNT