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The Fish Bites Back: James Cameron & Piranha 3D

I kinda sorta almost want to see Piranha 3D. Not because I think it will be good, you see, but because I genuinely want some cheap, visceral 3D action. After all, what’s the point of 3D if it’s simply adding several layours to your 2D watching experience. I realise this makes me sound like an uncultured slob (which, let’s face it, if the glove fits…) but I really want to see a tacky exploitative bit of 3D cinema where things fly out of the screen at me a make me jump out of my seat. It’s not a feeling I’m particularly proud of, but it’s there. Anyway, James Cameron seems to hate me, and people like me. When asked about Piranha 3D, he offered this snippet:

I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year — Tron: Legacy — is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.

Okay, I can’t quite argue with that, but it still seems a little bit harsh.

From the looks of it, what James Cameron wants to do to Piranha 3D...

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Non-Review Review: Executive Decision

Are you manly? I mean really manly? In a way, Executive Decision is kinda what I was hoping for when I heard about The Expendables. It’s not an excellent movie, or even an exceptional one – in fact, it can be cynically described as Die Hard on a plane” – but it’s a perfectly serviceable action movie that gets bonus points for never trying to be anything more than what it is. There’s not tangential romantic plot or half-hearted attempts at characterisation: the movie is all business. And that business is attempting to give its audience testosterone poisoning. 

Not quite plane sailing ahead...

 

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Non-Review Review: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is one of the “big” blockbusters which defined the nineties. It’s easily recognisable and has thoroughly entrenched itself deep in popular culture – along with Independence Day or Terminator 2. Also, like the two aforementioned films, it’s actually quite good. Of course, coming from director Stephen Spielberg, the man who invented blockbuster cinema with Jaws, can’t hurt. 

I call him "Rex"...

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Non-Review Review: The Player

I love The Player. I really do. When I was in college, I used to organise movie screenings – we’d show The Player once a year and it would always pack out. It was just one of those films that everybody had heard nothing but good things about, but never got a chance to see. Indeed, I would go so far as to say The Player, with all its wacky fourth-wall meta-ness, is my favourite Robert Altman film.

Who would want to kill this producer? Answers on the back of a postcard...

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Excuse My Na’vi-ity: At What Point Does Re-Releasing Avatar Become Overkill?

I’ll admit that I did not like James Cameron’s Avatar as much as most. It was a slight disturbing racial fantasy played with Disney-esque simplicity and some truly incredible special effects. Such is life. It’s inevitable that my opinion diverges from the mainstream from time-to-time. I mean, everyone’s should at one point or another, right? Still, I can’t be the only person who thinks that re-releasing Avatar into the cinema smacks of cynicism – particularly with eight minutes of restored footage (that’s less that 5% of the total runtime). The movie is already the most successful movie ever made. At what point does enough become enough? 

This movie has wings...

 

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The Sean Connery Effect: Pardon My Accent…

Sean Connery turned eighty last week, and there were all manner of celebrations. I can’t really add too much that hasn’t already been said about the legendary actor, with his smooth Scottish accent and effortless charm, but I got thinking about Sean Connery and what I think of when I hear the name or what I associate him with. And, without a doubt, it’s that thick Scottish accent, which just makes even me weak at the knees when I hear it.

I have something I need to get off my (very hairy) chest...

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Non-Review Review: Forrest Gump

On one level, Forrest Gump is just too sacchrine for me. Really, I feel like a need a filling after joining the eponymous character on a whirlwind tour of modern American history (or what could really be described as “America’s greatest hits”). That said, there’s a certain charm to the movie that belies this incredible sweetness (which itself stands in sharp contrast to the cynicism of the novel upon which it will be based). And most of that charm is Tom Hanks.

Plus it doesn’t hurt that the movie has an amazing soundtrack.

Forrest was quite popular in the nineties...

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Non-Review Review: Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi is a word that comes from the language of the Hopi. It’s handily translated at the end of the film, with one of the meanings lending the film its unofficial subtitle: “life out of balance”. Brought to the screen by director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass (not that you’d know it from the film’s sparse opening credits which simply identify the film as “a Francis Ford Coppola production”), it’s safe to say that Koyaanisqatsi is one of a kind. Or, given the two sequels, one of three of a kind, but that’s still quite impressive.

Let there be light...

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Non-Review Review: Grown Ups

It’s very difficult to offer a movie that takes a cynical “Hollywood type” back to their roots. There are many reasons. The most obvious is that the type of person making the movie is a cynical Hollywood type and there’s something of an irony about making a film about the roots they’ve lost contact with – oftentimes it is more difficult to offer a grounded version of reality than it is to depict an alien invasion or a thoroughly ridiculous premise. Grown Ups is the second film this year which sees Adam Sandler playing a character attempting to reconnect with the common man – perhaps a timely theme in light of the recession, when the glitz and glamour of Hollywood stand in even starker contrast to the day-to-day lives of regular folks. However, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Sandler (whose production company produced the film and who co-wrote the script) is having something of a midlife crisis.

Not exactly a deep pool of talent...

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End of the Line: Unearned Happy Endings…

I reviewed Baby Mama earlier today and – while I was impressed with the film’s willingness to tackle a somewhat controversial topic – I was less than impressed by the somewhat conventional ending tacked on to the film. And then I mellowed out a bit. “It is a comedy after all,” I reminded myself, in the hope that I would forgive the film because it wasn’t a black comedy – most lighthearted comedies call for a light-hearted ending, after all. Besides, this particular film isn’t the only film in recent memory to resort to a disappointingly conventional ending, so why does it bother me so much?

Not everybody gets a fairytale ending...

Note: As you may have guessed from the topic, I’ll be discussing endings here – particularly the one from Baby Mama. Consider yourself warned, there are spoilers ahead.

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