Screenwriter »

• What 3-D is really for…

  August 27, 2011 @ 7:50 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  In my review of the amusing Final Destination 5 I neglected to mention that it actually makes rather good use of 3-D. There, I’ve said it. I’ve allowed myself to recommend at least one use of that unlovely process. Over the years, I have found myself in the preposterous position of disagreeing with various geniuses about this menace to all that’s decent. On several occasions, when talking to the directors of Pixar pictures, I have listened to them explain why — rather than just throwing things at the audience — they have worked hard at making 3-D an “immersive” experience for the audience. That is to say as the film progresses you will cease to notice the 3-D and find yourself being dragged into the experience. Before long, the itching from the stupid glasses will be the only clue that you are watching a film presented in more than one dimension.

  Well aware that I’m an idiot and they are among the great innovators in modern cinema, I pull myself up to my full height and explain that this is precisely the opposite of what 3-D should be about. It’s a cheap gimmick (not literally cheap, but you get my drift) that is only effective when used to enhance the propulsion of objects towards the audience. They got this in the 1950s. You didn’t catch Elia Kazan or Nicholas Ray dallying with the process. It was the preserve of exploitation merchants who savoured any technique that might make the audience jump from their seats. Yet, it’s hung around so long this time, otherwise sensible folk such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg are now giving in and getting all “immersive”. Spare me. Now, Disney have decided to propel the perfectly acceptable The Lion King into three dimensions. As Alyssa Bereznak of Gizmodo so eloquently puts it., Why Does Disney Insist in Shitting All Over My Memories?

  I know I’ve droned on about this before. But it’s worth pointing out that there is a place for 3-D in movies. When a teenager falls fatally on a yacht’s mast and that mast juts towards the camera then, by all means, drag out the wretched technique. Just such an event occurs in Final Destination 5. Splatter us with blood. Fling decapitated heads in our laps. But don’t try and call this fairground ride high art. Okay, it worked quite well for Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. But that had a very, very specific purpose: demonstrating the contours of an ancient artwork. Otherwise, it’s only good for making topnotch trash seem that bit more unsettling.

  No more on this subject. No more. No more. Go away!

• Hitler invented 3-D

  February 18, 2011 @ 3:36 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Isn’t there some theory arguing that, after a certain number of iterations, any argument on the internet will result in a mention of Hitler? “You prefer dogs to cats? So did Hitler. What does that tell you? Huh, huh?” That sort of thing. Happily, for all those sensible people who hate 3-D, there is now a short-cut to the Hitler gambit. A recent report suggests that the Nazis did indeed devise the unlovely process.

  It seems that Phillipe Mora, an Australian film-maker, has uncovered several bumpy films shot by Nazi propagandists in the mid-1930s. The first carries the unambiguous title So Real You can Touch It. The second emerged under the more intriguing moniker Six Girls Roll Into Weekend. One imagines Aryan girls in swimsuits (or not) gamely volleying beach balls back and forwards to one another.

  “The quality of the films is fantastic,” Mora said. “The Nazis were obsessed with recording everything and every single image was controlled – it was all part of how they gained control of the country and its people.”

  Heed those words, film fans. That’s “how  they gained control of the country and its people.” Each time you don the silly glasses you are helping Megapictures dominate the universe. Before long, you will be their helpless slaves. Hitler invented 3-D. What does that tell you? Huh? Huh?

• Spider-Man ponders the re-reboot.

  January 15, 2011 @ 4:10 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  There was a mild disturbance in the Nerdisphere this week when images of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man emerged. As you may be aware, the latest webslinger picture is to be a reboot of the franchise launched so successfully by Sam Raimi nearly a decade ago.

  If the chatter is to be credited, this will be a (God help us) “darker” version of the hurtling Marvel superhero. You know what that means. Rather than having Spider-Man quip his way from one shiny skyscraper to the next, the film will encourage the hero to stand miserably on bridges in the sodding rain while contemplating the awfulness of everything. It will, in other words, look like the vast majority of recent super-hero flicks. Surely, Raimi’s vision stood out because it wasn’t yet another cod-Freudian misery-fest. (Of course, the new film may be nothing like the punters anticipate, but a debate on the pointlessness of such speculation will have to wait for another day.)

  What’s properly irritating about all this is the preposterous unavoidability of the whole reboot phenomenon. It’s difficult to pin down when this all began. But it started to become a craze following Christopher Nolan’s successful Batman Begins in 2005. In the world of comics, it has long been common to transplant a character to an alternative universe where different laws and habits apply. In such cases, the new Caterpillar-Man and the old version often continue to exist in parallel. Issues of Amazing Caterpillar-Man and Spectacular Caterpillar-Man sit beside one another in Forbidden Planet. In movies, the old version — the increasingly cheesy Joel Schumacher-era Batman, for example — is binned and the new, hipper (supposedly “darker”) incarnation takes over.

  To be fair, it made sense with Batman, but Marvel do seem to be a bit ahead of themselves with Spider-Man. The series is less than 10 years old and includes only three chapters. All were financially successful and only the third — too busy, too many villains — disappointed the fans. Surely, we could get by with a fourth in the same sequence, even if it involved recasting the hero.

  Perhaps that is exactly what’s happening. In recent years, the term has become so flexible as to be almost meaningless. I offer you The Incredible Hulk as an example. More than a few pundits argued that that the picture was, yes, a “reboot” of the one-episode franchise launched by Ang Lee a few years earlier. How so? When dealing with a superhero series, to justify the r-word, a film-maker must, surely, go back to the beginning and deal with the origin story. The Ed Norton version — though it featured an origin-tale over the title credits — was obviously a conventional sequel. It began exactly where the previous film left off. The tone was similar. Schumacher’s Batman Forever was as much a reboot as was The Incredible Hulk.

  At any rate, it seems clear that the word is now being used (surprise, surprise) as a cynical marketing ploy. Any small tweaks in the aesthetic allow the promoters to claim reboot status. You can see why. A more abstract school of escapism is being sold to us. Wouldn’t the world be a happier place if we could press a button and restart our lives without debt, without stress, without grey hair and without Val Kilmer as Batman? The reboot is a kind of spiritual rebirth by proxy.

  See how much “darker” this “blog” has just become? This post marks the rebooting of Screen-Writer.

• 3-D for speccies!

  January 5, 2011 @ 9:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I am sure that distributors are sick to death of film critics complaining about the stubborn refusal of 3-D to go away and die. They spend millions researching this process, look back in delight as audiences flock to don the specs — the two biggest films of 2010, Toy Story 3 and Alice and Wonderland, employed the technique, remember — then fume as smart-alec scribes whinge about the darkened screen and only modestly impressive bumpy effects.

  Even the process’s greatest enthusiasts must, however, admit that one complaint is unanswerable. If you wear glasses, the 3-D spectacles are a pain in the ass to accommodate. You are forever clicking them backwards and forwards. Every now and then you will remove the things and — just to enjoy a few moments comfort — endure five minutes of drunkenly blurred 2-D action. The complaint is, I repeat, unanswerable.

  Until now!

  Many thanks to the good folk at Walt Disney for sending me out this prototype of clip-on 3-D glasses for the myopic film fan. I have yet to attend a picture wearing the things, but I can report that they fit very snuggly onto the traditional eye-glass and have a handy flip-up mode for trips to the lavatory and hotdog stand. I shall be wearing them to next week’s press screening of The Green Hornet (sadly, not a Disney flick) and will report on their efficacy shortly thereafter.

  Perhaps I will finally be converted.

• Red faces at Hogwarts.

  October 9, 2010 @ 5:36 pm | by Donald Clarke

  In what must be regarded as a hugely embarrassing move, Warner Brothers has, with just a month to go before release, announced that the studio will not, as previously promised, be delivering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I in 3-D. The procedure was underway, but delays in processing the footage had become so extreme that the film-makers were forced to admit defeat. It is quite something when one of the year’s biggest films — alas, possibly the biggest — runs into this sort of hitch at this late a date. To add to the humiliation, we will now have a strange situation in which, all going well over the next six months, the second part of a bifurcated film will be released in 3-D, after its opening movement was released in just a flat version. Nothing like this has ever happened before.

  

  Not in any way sad. Not. In. Any. Way.

  Here’s where we grudgingly (very, very grudgingly) have to give the studio some degree of credit. Early this year, Warners handed 3-D haters some more ammunition when they released the largely awful Clash of the Titans in a retrofitted, bargain-basement version of the process. There seems little doubt that the boffins at Harry Potter could have pulled off that class of low-grade bumpiness, but they do seem to be exercising a degree of quality control here. If they can’t provide proper 3-D for their prestige pictures then they won’t provide any at all. That seems an honourable move.

  Still, those horrible people who find 3-D a trial and Harry Potter a bore will be sniggering into their handkerchiefs tonight. They should be ashamed of themselves.

• So who does like 3-D?

  November 1, 2009 @ 11:55 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Now that’s what I call a 3-D movie.

  There is, sadly, no way around it. The return of 3-D is one of the big  stories of the cinematic decade. Though only around 20 percent of Irish screens showing films available in 3-D were able to offer punters the process this summer – the rest showed the old-fashioned flat versions – those screenings accounted for about 50 percent of takings for the relevant pictures. Yet, however many people you ask, you never seem to find anybody who actually likes the blasted business. It’s the Robson and Jerome of its era. The phenomenon is a roaring success, but its fans all seem to live in remote caves or in bubbles at the bottom of the ocean.

  Okay, the story is not quite so unfathomable as I have suggested. Whereas almost all adults will tell you they find the process underwhelming, uncomfortable and overpriced, younger children do tend to enjoy putting on the glasses and ducking the hurtling spears. You may complain about Pixar giving in and issuing Up in 3-D, but the truth is they had no serious alternative. If a kiddie’s birthday bash arrives at a screen showing Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs in 3-D and a flat version of Up you can be fairly certain which entertainment the young consumers will plump for. For all his talk of immersive 3-D, Pixar’s John Lasseter knew that he had little choice but to order the Upsters to make with the digital depth-finders.

  So what? To this point, 3-D films have tended to be family entertainments anyway. The number of kids who get excited by the thought of a bumpy Up, Ice Age or Meatballs greatly exceed the number of parents scared away by the thought of paying more money to see a darker screen in marginally greater discomfort. The success has encouraged exhibitors to install digital projection systems — thereby saving the studios money on print costs — and the 3-D presentations have proved much harder to pirate. Who cares if only kids like this stuff?

  James Cameron. That’s who. The beardy Canadian made Titanic the biggest film in history by appealing to virtually every demographic. Okay, Avatar, which opens in a little over a month, will also be available in flat prints, but, what with so much of the promotion focussing on the 3-D effects, Cameron clearly believes that those old enough to vote do genuinely crave the process. I am still unconvinced. Is there anybody out there over the age of 15 who would give a fig if 3-D withered away yet again? Come to think of it, is there anybody out there still excited by Avatar?

  Anyway, if you do fancy the gimmick then Disney’s A Christmas Carol is coming at you later this week. And I mean coming at you.

• Do I have an improper mind?

  October 27, 2009 @ 11:49 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Do I have an improper mind or is there something a little, well, off about this poster for Disney’s upcoming animated version of A Christmas Carol? Maybe Scrooge (who never married, remember) is just excited to be clutching his flying pointy-thing. Quite right too. While astride something that thrilling, who would waste time thinking about Tiny Tim ?