Remember Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland? The one I reviewed earlier this month in my last post? Remember how bad the 3-D was in that?
Well, now that new 3-D movies are practically hitting theatres every week after the crazy, crazy success of Avatar in December, there are some crucial information that every cinephile should be aware of - I'll keep the technical bits simple. There are basically 2 ways a filmmaker will go about making a 3-D flick. The first way is to employ a specialised camera system that actually shoots in 3-D or, as in the case of animated flicks, render them in true 3-D.
The second way is to shoot a movie or make a CG movie using conventional methods, and then up-convert it to 3-D later. Alice in Wonderland belongs to this category of films; hence its inherent shittiness.
Now, a new 3-D flick is coming to theatres. It's Louis Leterrier's Clash of the Titans and I'll tell you now that it was converted to 3-D after being shot. The decision to do so was made after the studio which made it saw how insanely well Avatar did at the box office, and wanted in on some of that sweet, sweet moolah. Alice in Wonderland's 3-D conversion process took 6 months to complete and it's still crap. I believe that that's because it wasn't made with 3-D sensibilities in mind. Clash of the Titan's 3-D conversion was rushed over 6 weeks, and the work was outsourced to some unknown company in India. Just imagine how it would look.
I'm excited about this flick but I'm not going to pay like double just to ruin the film for myself - so I advise everyone to see it on ye olde 2-D screens.
Or better yet, go see How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D - on IMAX 3-D if you have the dough and opportunity.
I'd write a review but again, NO TIME. But I'll say a few things about it. It's probably the most sweetest, most touching film I've seen coming out of DreamWorks Animation (or as I have told a million people; "It's the best Pixar movie DreamWorks has ever made!"), and the use of 3-D in this movie is probably the best example there is in the industry right now. Also, the flying-on-dragon sequences in this film was done waaay better than those in Avatar, I kid you not. James Cameron's mega hard-on of a movie is in no way belonging to the same league as this flick when it comes to those parts. The musical score in How to Train Your Dragon is beautiful and the creature design of the starring dragon, Toothless, is pretty damn cute. And after seeing this movie, you'd feel a bit depressed that dragons don't exist for realsies for you to ride them.
Plus, did you notice how much Toothless resembled Stitch from Lilo and Stitch? That's 'cause both movies were made by the same people.
So yeah, go see How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D because this movie is so not getting the love it deserves, and is currently being upstaged by other films which are nowhere nearly as good as it is. Take into account that this might be your last chance to ever experience it the way it's meant to be enjoyed before it's being pulled from 3-D screens in a week or two.
Vote with our wallets, people. We're now in a cinematic era where 3-D can be more than a gimmick. Do a minute or two of research on every movie you plan to see in 3-D - and if you can read blogs like this one, chances are you know your way to Wikipedia. It can very well save you from a terrible movie-going experience (and some cash in the process too).
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Update! And uh, some spoilers, I guess, not that you can spoil a movie like Clash of the Titans anyway.
Just saw the film in normal-D like a few hours ago and I can't make up my mind if it's a movie that's so bad it's good, or so bad it's bad. I did not see the 1981 movie of the same name this was a remake of. Now, I have a pretty good working knowledge of the Greek classical myths (it was a teenage phase) and I'll be the first to tell you that this is a total butchering of the Perseid mythos. Bellerophon rode pegasus, not Perseus. The gods Athena and Hermes helped him slay the Medusa, and are not part of Team Olympus' rage against mankind. The original Hades is not Satan, not evil and does not want to take over Zeus' pad in the sky (and if I'm not mistaken, he loaned Perseus his Helm of Darkness) so Hollywood needs to stop painting him as the Big Bad. Let's not even go into the bits about djinns and the Kraken's parentage, okay?
But I'm totally okay with all the nonsensical bits in the story. No, really. My main complain is that they didn't go even more over the top - the way Zack Snyder's 300 was. If you're not going to be serious, go for broke - be totally dumb and AWESOME. They should have poisoned it with so much testosterone that all the women watching it would spontaneously grow hair on their chests. That being said, some of the creature concepts were pretty inspired. I especially like Charon's boat. I also liked Io's boobs. Ah, how I long for the days when some chub on a girl is a standard for feminine beauty. Full-bodied Greek women are so yummeh.
Andromeda's bondage sequence so needed to be like this.
And now that we're on the subject, the sex scene between Perseus' mom and Zeus could have been retooled a little too. Zeus is the floating puff of gold dust, by the way, not the mannish servant.
People who have seen the movie would know that there was two mind-blowingly awesome scenes that the director or screenwriter totally dropped the ball on. The first was the totally anticlimactic ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny between Perseus and Godzilla-Kraken (they could have an ally try to retrieve the stolen head of Medusa while Perseus hold Big Ugly off or something). The second was that they could have ol' grizzled and scarred Draco (played by professional bad ass Mads Mikkelsen) follow up on his promise literally - you know, the one he made when Perseus asked him why he never smiles.
"The day I spit in the gods' eyes is the day I smile."
And heavy metal guitar riffs should totally have accompanied those lines.
Your friendly neighborhood cine-geek,
k0k s3n w4i
2 comments:
Thank you for that, trying to get the word out about fake 3D myself.
And my, this will probably be the only time when I agree with every single word you wrote. It's uncanny.
McGarmott: You should, you know... tell people about fake 3D. You'll probably reach more cinephiles than me since you write a dedicated film blog :D
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