Can JACKASS save 3D from itself?
Jun 08
Six months ago the news broke that a third Jackass feature was going into production, and that it would be shot in 3D. Collider recently chatted with series director Jeff Tremane, who confirmed that the shooting is near completion; they’ve got a bit of international shooting to do, and then they’re done, aiming for a mid-October 2010 release date. He also says the 3D aspect of the footage is “awesome.”
I don’t know why I love Jackass (and spin-off Wildboyz) so much. I could waffle something about how our agriculture-based society tends to indulge in self-destructive activities in a bizarre mating ritual (e.g. showing off to potential mates that our harvest is so plentiful that we can afford to drink ourselves sick every weekend), and that watching people like Johnny Knoxville and Chris Pontius take that to the next level is magnetically appealing; or I could concede that I was just a teenager at the right time and Jackass was the anarchic antidote to the systematic dullness of high school.
Either way, having projectile vomit, snakes, bees, genitalia and goodness knows what else coming at your face in 3D will do one of two things for me: it’ll galvanise for me the belief that 3D is a waste of time and money, and that I can never buy into it; or it’ll show me that with the right context 3D can be immersive and fun. Avatar was supposed to help me sort that problem out, but it didn’t. Now, instead of pinning my judgement of the format on a James Cameron-helmed monster, I’m putting my faith in the hands of a bunch of alcoholic sadists.
How the rest of the world will react to Jackass 3D is beyond my ability to predict. The first two flicks did moderate business, but the market’s pretty niche. I’m just hoping that Jackass 3D will be the movie that proves to studios that 3D movies don’t all have to be fantasy flicks and Dreamworks talking-animal pictures. Maybe that’ll lead the way for more mature, intersting projects in 3D.
Jackass 3D: a force for good in the world, or the bane of humanity’s existence? You be the judge.
The top 5 female film protagonists
Jun 05
Sometimes, white-male-dominated Hollywood freaks out and breaks the rules and accidentally makes a movie with a woman instead of a man in the lead role. Sometimes, these movies don’t even objectify or ogle their subjects, they just treat them like regular people. Sometimes, these movies are even good.
In the wake of the culturally disastrous Sex And The City 2, I felt it was prudent — nay, necessary – to look to some more promising leading ladies in order to a) wash my brain out, b) remind myself that the XX-chromosomed world isn’t all glitter, high-heels, and awful one-liners, and c) remind myself of those rare good movies that accidentally swapped their male protag for a woman at some point in development.
So without further ado, here’s a list of my five favourite female protagonists from the past few decades:
5 – Sarah Connor (The Terminator & Terminator 2, 1984 & 1991)
I liked Sarah Connor better when she was just a regular gal, in The Terminator, than I liked her as the verging-on-insane mother-on-a-mission she became in Terminator 2, but either way, she makes a compelling protagonist. Plucked seemingly at random from a phonebook by a creepy Austrian bodybuilder — isn’t that everyone’s worst nightmare? — she carried herself well through all the crazy time travel bullshit, and came out at the end of it still resembling a realistic — if damaged — human being. Shame she suddenly and inexplicably succumbed to leukemia in time for the third one, though.
4 – Rosemary Woodhouse (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968)
Before I watched Roman Polanski’s classic horror film, I hadn’t really understood just how scary men could be — even regular blokes, like husbands, friends, and fathers. But as Rosemary’s paranoia escalated, I empathised with her every single step of the way, sampling a mere inkling of the constant fear some women are forced to live in. The fact that Roman Polanski is a convicted rapist only adds to the horror.
3 – Maggie Fitzgerald (Million Dollar Baby, 2004)
The realm of boxing biffo in film is one usually reserved exclusively for men, but with Million Dollar Baby Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank showed us that it can be equally compelling to watch a couple of women knocking the stuffing out of each other as it is a pair of blokes. On top of this refreshing gender-swap, Million Dollar Baby isn’t your garden variety underdog sports film, either: it’s a gripping narrative and a rollercoaster of emotions, with a whole raft of memorable characters. Swank deserves every gram of that little gold statue she won for her performance here. God only knows why she went on to do crap like The Reaping, PS I Love You and Amelia.
2 – Ellen Ripley (Alien franchise, 1979 – 1997)
Before James Cameron got to the character and morphed her into some warrior-goddess-mother caricature, Ellen Ripley was just another member of a non-descript space crew. She may have been near (or at) the bottom of the pecking order aboard the Nostromo, but she was the only crewman with the balls to go toe-to-toe with the xenomorph… and live to brag about it. Ripley was still a strong woman in the sequels, but it was her quiet determination in 1979′s Alien that really set her apart.
1 – Ellie Arroway (Contact, 1997)
Being the first human ever to make contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence is kind of a big deal, but the obstacles Ellie had to go through just to say “G’day” to our interstellar neighbours — institutionalised misogyny, religious fanaticism, and terrorist attacks — only serves to make her an even bigger deal. Ellie’s passion, love and sheer unadulterated enthusiasm for science and the unknown is inspirational. It’s rare to see a woman in movies so passionate about something that isn’t shoes, so Ellie easily swipes my number 1 spot.
The fact that I struggled to put together five different female characters for this list is troubling. Browsing lists of the most commercially and critically successful movies, very few of them are driven by women. Fifty percent of the people on this planet are of the double-X variety; you’d think that would show up in our culture and our art, wouldn’t you?
I hope this has been as cleansing an experience for you as it has been for me. Why, I’ve nearly forgotten just how bad Sex And The City 2 was! Nearly…
Any suggestions for who you’d include in the list, or who you’d exclude? The first person to mention Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft wins a box full of sarcasm.
The week in 3D news
May 14
I’m exaggerating — this isn’t really a week’s worth of news. But, with Cannes officially underway, news has been flying thick and fast. So who’s ready for a big ol’ 3D update?
First up, Universal Soldier 4 is going ahead in 3D with John Hyams directing, Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren starring; shooting begins in October 2010, so expect a late ’11 release. Haven’t seen the first 3 (I thought there were only two… ) so I’m not qualified to exclaim or complain about this news.
Next up, Dario Argento, the giallo director who spent most of the 70s defining the slasher and horror genres, is set to shoot a “faithful” 3D adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula. He’ll be shooting in Italy in January 2011, so expect a release at least a year after that. I’ve read Dracula, and from what I can tell no single film adaptation (not even Bram Stoker’s Dracula) has been anywhere near even 90% faithful to the book (for many reasons, including the fact that the novel is composed of a few dozen first-person letters, rendering the novel unsuitable to direct film adaptations); so I’m gonna take the “faithful” claim with a grain of salt.
Now to a 3D Judge Dredd reboot, penned by 28 Days Later’s Alex Garland and directed by Vantage Point‘s Pete Travis, rolls in Q4 2010 in Johannesburg. Not sure if that’s calendar Q4 or that other Q4, which is actually the first few months of 2011, but either way, don’t expect the film until 2012. I like the idea behind Judge Dredd — it’s pure sci-fi with a dash of irony, strongly remeniscent of Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi flicks (RoboCop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers); I’ve only heard bad things about the 95 adaptation with Sly in the titular role so fingers crossed for this one!
And finally, speaking at a tech convention in Seoul, James Cameron has identified the main obstacle in the path of the 3D revolution: the lack of content. Quoth he: “If you play all the 3-D movies in existence on your fancy new 3-D TV, it will keep you entertained for about 3 days. This content gap is the biggest hurdle for the rapid adoption of 3D TV.” Also, he says a release date for Avatar 2 will be released “in the next few months,” but that isn’t really news, is it?
With every man and his dog jumping on the 3D bandwagon, it shouldn’t take too much longer to extend those 3 days into a week, will it? Is it too much to ask for one of these 3D movies to be good?
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